Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike

But, as with an iceberg, everything was below the surface. In their house on Claybourne Street, the tension was concealed, and calm and reason almost always prevailed, because of their love for us. Love wasn’t spoken, or shown, but it was there, always. My sisters and I grew up knowing that both

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.

The single easiest way to find out how you feel about someone. Say goodbye.

Inspiration, he learned, can come from quotidian things.

you run because the alternative, stopping, scares you to death.

Colonial house, beautiful wife, obedient kids, my father enjoyed having these things, but what he really cherished was his friends and neighbors knowing he had them. He liked being admired. He

I was a linear thinker, and according to Zen linear thinking is nothing but a delusion, one of the many that keep us unhappy. Reality is nonlinear, Zen says. No future, no past. All is now.

asked myself: What if there were a way, without being an athlete, to feel what athletes feel? To play all the time, instead of working? Or else to enjoy work so much that it becomes essentially the same thing.

When you hired an accountant, you knew he or she could count. When you hired a lawyer, you knew he or she could talk. When you hired a marketing expert, or product developer, what did you know? Nothing.

As ever, the accountant in me saw the risk, the entrepreneur saw the possibility. So I split the difference and kept moving forward.