“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.”

Don’t let fatigue make a coward of you.

As far as being a coach, it’s always fascinated me. It’s a greater responsibility than most people give it credit for because you’re dealing with people.

What kind of crazy nut would spend two or three hours a day just running?

A race is a work of art.

If you fail to prepare, prepare to fail.

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.

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.

The idea of losing the three at Hayward Field and the idea of losing my specialty to someone who wasn’t running his specialty. Mostly, the idea of losing in front of my people. They haven’t forgotten about me.

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

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

Don’t be afraid to give up the good for the great.

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

I run to see who has the most guts.

Running gives me confidence.

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.

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

Do not leave your reputation to chance or gossip; it is your life’s artwork, and you must craft it, hone it, and display it with the care of an artist.

It is said of great Empires, That the best way to preserve them from decay, is to bring them back to the first Principles, and Arts, on which they did begin.”

If we know the divine art of concentration, if we know the divine art of meditation, if we know the divine art of contemplation, easily and consciously we can unite the inner world and the outer world.

Art is a marriage of the conscious and the unconscious.

ART is domination. It’s making people think that for that precise moment in time there is only one way, one voice. Yours.

The business and design of the Royal Society is: To improve the knowledge of naturall things, and all useful Arts, Manufactures, Mechanic practices, Engines and Inventions by Experiments-(not meddling with Divinity, Metaphysics, Moralls, Politicks, Grammar, Rhetoric or Logick).

Art is science in the flesh.

Learn how to meditate on paper. Drawing and writing are forms of meditation. Learn how to contemplate works of art. Learn how to pray in the streets or in the country. Know how to meditate not only when you have a book in your hand but when you are waiting for a bus or riding in a train.