How does a kid from Coos Bay, with one leg longer than the other win races?

To give anything less than your best is to sacrifice the gift.

A lot of people run a race to see who is fastest. I run to see who has the most guts, who can punish himself into exhausting pace, and then at the end, punish himself even more.

You have to wonder at times what you're doing out there. Over the years, I've given myself a thousand reasons to keep running, but it always comes back to where it started. It comes down to self-satisfaction and a sense of achievement.

What I want is to be number one.

Something inside of me just said 'Hey, wait a minute, I want to beat him,' and I just took off.

I'm going to work so that it's a pure guts race at the end, and if it is, I am the only one who can win it.

Somebody may beat me, but they are going to have to bleed to do it.

How does a kid from Coos Bay, with one leg longer than the other win races?

I run to see who has the most guts.

A race is a work of art that people can look at and be affected in as many ways they're capable of understanding.

American athletes, especially distance runners, are at a big disadvantage against the rest of the world. We're expected to live by all the rules, like not being able to coach, but still train and make our own living.

Did you ever run behind a slow pack? You get a trailing wind and a lot of body odor.

Every once in a while I think, 'What am I doing out here running, busting myself up? Life could be so much easier. The other guys are out having fun, doing other things, why not me?'

For me, running against the Poles and Czechs would be like running against high school kids. And I hate all this gung-ho, run-for-the-red-white-and-blue attitude that the AAU spouts. If that's important to some people, fine, more power to 'em. But, damn it, I wish they'd leave me alone to do what I want to do - run against the best.

I know places you better speak low if you've been to college. Men will come across the room and cold-deck you if you hold your glass wrong.

I like to be able to go out to dinner once in a while. I like to be able to drive my MG up the McKenzie River on a weekday afternoon. I like to be able to pay my bills on time.

I'm the one who has made all the sacrifices. Those are my American records, not the country's.

I've been in international competition, and now I know what the big boys can do. You don't go out and just run. There's an offense and a defense.

If he's having a good day and running the right race, nobody can beat Frank Shorter at 10,000 meters... nobody except me.

Kids made fun of me because I was a slow learner, because I was hyperactive, because of a lot of things. Running gave me confidence.

My philosophy is that I'm an artist. I perform an art not with a paint brush or a camera. I perform with bodily movement. Instead of exhibiting my art in a museum or a book or on canvas, I exhibit my art in front of the multitudes.

No one will ever win a 5,000-meter by running an easy two miles. Not against me.

Nobody likes tainted victories.

Over the years, I've given myself a thousand reasons to keep running, but it always comes back to where it started. It comes down to self-satisfaction and a sense of achievement.

People say I should be running for a gold medal for the old red, white and blue and all that bull, but it's not gonna be that way.

Some people create with words or with music or with a brush and paints. I like to make something beautiful when I run. I like to make people stop and say, 'I've never seen anyone run like that before.' It's more than just a race, it's a style. It's doing something better than anyone else. It's being creative.

To give anything less than your best, is to sacrifice the gift.

To hell with love of country - I compete for myself.

When people go to a track meet, they're looking for something, a world record, something that hasn't been done before. You get all this magnetic energy, people focusing on one thing at the same time. I really get excited about it. It makes me want to compete even more. It makes it all worthwhile, all the hours of hard work.

You probably choose x-country because you were too small to play football.

Success isn't how far you got, but the distance you traveled from where you started.

Most people run a race to see who is fastest. I run a race to see who has the most guts.

Food is not a means toward resolution. It can't cure heartbreak or solve untenable dilemmas.

No one can be perfectly free till all are free; no one can be perfectly moral till all are moral; no one can be perfectly happy till all are happy.

Those expressions are omitted which can not with propriety be read aloud in the family.

People's - most people's job is talking about the future or like money not even in the present tense. It's not even paper.

Those who knew Lincoln described him as an extraordinarily funny man. Humor was an essential aspect of his temperament. He laughed, he explained, so he did not weep.

There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.

My whole life, I've felt like I didn't quite measure up.

I've always had this thing where I can't stop. I hate standing still.

When I was confronted with official tuition, the academic thing, I could see no relationship whatever between that and the music I'd been writing since I was 11.

But the business side of it, as with most creative things, there is no room for business. It is about art. It's not about marketing.

I feel like if I consider myself comfortable in something, then that's not exactly where I want to be. And in 'Jane the Virgin' specifically, I feel like I don't have to choose... We get to do drama and comedy sometimes within the same thirty seconds.

My name is not big enough for people to go, 'Let me throw money at you because you're so famous!'

There's this large trend - I think the next trend in the Web, sort of Web 2.0 - which is to have users really express, offer, and market their own content, their own persona, their identity.

Working with a bunch of actors is like trying to tune each violin.

Sometimes when you've got too much money you lose your imagination.

No way did I ever think I was going to win the 100m.