Des Linden Quotes

Having passion for work alone might be the ultimate goal of all, because the work is the only thing that is really, truly yours. You’re entitled only to your labor. You’re not entitled to the fruit of your labor. The universe guarantees no results.

Getting back in shape is never easy, but, as I kept reminding myself, being in shape is awesome. And for all my aversion to monotony, once I settled back into routine, I thrived on it.

The Camera Eye (38) sealed signed and delivered all over Tours you can smell lindens in bloom it’s hot my uniform sticks the OD chafes me under the chin only four days ago AWOL crawling under the freight cars at the station of St. Pierre-des-Corps waiting in the buvette for the MP on guard to look away from the door so’s I could slink out with a cigarette (and my heart) in my mouth then in a tiny box of a hotel room changing the date on that old movement order but today my discharge sealed signed and delivered sends off sparks in my pocket like a romancandle I walk past the headquarters of the SOS Hay sojer your tunic’s unbuttoned (f—k you buddy) and down the lindenshaded street to the bathhouse that has a court with flowers in the middle of it the hot water gushes green out of brass swanheads into the whitemetal tub I strip myself naked soap myself all over with the sour pink soap slide into the warm deepgreen tub through the white curtain in the window a finger of afternoon sunlight lengthens on the ceiling towel’s dry and warm smells of steam in the suitcase I’ve got a suit of civvies I borrowed from a fellow I know the buck private in the rear rank of Uncle Sam’s Medical Corps (serial number . . . never could remember the number anyway I dropped it in the Loire) goes down the drain with a gurgle and hiss and having amply tipped and gotten the eye from the fat woman who swept up the towels I step out into the lindensmell of a July afternoon and stroll up to the café where at the little tables outside only officers may set their whipcord behinds and order a drink of cognac unservable to those in uniform while waiting for the train to Paris and sit down firmly in long pants in the iron chair an anonymous civilian

are

Josh always says you run the first 20 miles with your head and the last 6.2 with your heart,

Running felt like independence. It gave me time that was completely within my control. I was in charge of how much effort I put in and what I took away. I could wrestle with daily problems in my high school world or tune them out and enjoy the scenery. I could run away from things I didn’t want to confront or run straight toward a goal. Choosing to run was the first real decision I ever made. I ran because I wanted to, after years of playing other sports because I was told to. It put distance between who I was and who other people told me I should be.

Few things are more enraging to people than to have their identity or their sense of home stripped away. They will die for it, kill for it, sing for it, write poetry for it, and novelize about it. Because without a sense of home and belonging, life becomes barren and rootless. And life as a tumbleweed is no life at all.

Tolerating what most people would consider intolerable is the flip side of endurance.

What happened in Boston a year later was extraordinary. All thirty-six thousand runners who were there—from the elites, to the first-timers, to the people who had been trapped on the course and unable to finish—had a dual motivation: We all wanted to do our best and give the middle

It annoyed me when I heard "the grind" used in a pejorative way. Sure, it could be tedious, but it was a choice. Go off and do something else if you hate it

Will this help me become a champion? Act as if you are the thing you are trying to become.

Mainly, I wanted to put the intrinsic pleasure of running front and center

Getting back in shape is never easy, but, as I kept reminding myself, being in shape is awesome.

Badassery thrived in the incremental space between wussing out and being an idiot.