Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike

I’d read somewhere that the geese in the rear of the formation, cruising in the backdraft, only have to work 80 percent as hard as the leaders. Every runner understands this. Front runners always work the hardest, and risk the most.

I told myself: Life is growth. You grow or you die.

them, the iconoclasts, the innovators, the rebels, that they will always have a bull’s-eye on their backs. The better they get, the bigger the bull’s-eye. It’s not one man’s opinion; it’s a law of nature.

Of course, above all, I regret not spending more time with my sons. Maybe, if I had, I could’ve solved the encrypted code of Matthew Knight.

The cowards never started and the weak died along the way. That leaves us, ladies and gentlemen. Us.

For that matter, few ideas are as crazy as my favorite thing, running. It’s hard. It’s painful. It’s risky. The rewards are few and far from guaranteed. When you run around an oval track, or down an empty road, you have no real destination. At least, none that can fully justify the effort. The act itself becomes the destination. It’s not just that

an open plane ticket, good for one year on any airline going anywhere.

prescient,

hated war, but I loved the warrior spirit. I hated the sword, but loved the samurai.

conflagration.