Every runner understands this. Front runners always work the hardest, and risk the most. - Phil Knight

He was easy to talk to, and easy not to talk to — equally important qualities in a friend.

People, sensing my belief, wanted some of that belief for themselves. Belief, I decided. Belief is irresistible.

Perhaps nothing ever revealed my mother’s true nature like the frequent drills she put me through. As a young girl she’d witnessed a house in her neighborhood burn to the ground; one of the people inside had been killed. So she often tied a rope to the post of my bed and made me use it to rappel out of my second-floor window. While she timed me. What must the neighbors have thought? What must I have thought? Probably this: Life is dangerous. And this: We must always be prepared. And this: My mother loves me.