Adrian J. Walker > Quotes

“Before the first step, before the first muscle twitches, before the first neuron fires, there comes a choice: stand still or move. You choose the right option. Then you repeat that choice one hundred thousand times. You don’t run thirty miles, you run a single step many times over. That’s all running is; that’s all anything is. If there’s somewhere you need to be, somewhere you need to get to, or if you need to change or move away from where or what you are, then that’s all it takes. A hundred thousand simple decisions, each one made correctly. You don’t have to think about the distance or the destination or about how far you’ve come or how far you have to go. You just have to think about what’s in front of you and how you’re going to move it behind you.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“That beast inside you, the one you think is tethered tightly to the post, the one you’ve tamed with art, love, prayer, meditation: it’s barely muzzled. The knot is weak. The post is brittle. All it takes is two words and a siren to cut it loose.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“It wasn’t a return to a simpler life; it was a version of a simpler life. A version that replaced cholera, dysentery, freezing winters, lost harvests, frequent stillbirths, domestic violence and incest with underfloor heating, Sky Plus, solar panels and plump trust funds. It was just another decoration: wallpaper, not a return.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“Do you know why people tell stories, Ed?’ he said. He waited for me to speak, but I didn’t. He sniffed and went on. ‘Because the truth doesn’t really have any words of its own. They’re not enough, see? Stories work … good stories … because they make you feel something like how the truth would make you feel if you could hear it.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“Writing is just a trick, after all; you turn images into words that you hope will trigger similar images that already exist in the reader’s head.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“I believe what I believe to make life less terrifying. That’s all beliefs are: stories we tell ourselves to stop being afraid.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“It’s hard being a human. Most of the time we’re just blind idiots seeking joy in a world full of fear and pain. We have no idea what we’re doing, and on the rare occasions when we get things right, we’re just lucky.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“We think that language binds us, keeps us close, but sometimes I wonder how far apart we really are. We can make a million assumptions from the movement of an old man’s hand. Most of them are probably incorrect. All we have to go on is our own skewed window on the world. We’re like hermits living in the attics of big houses on lonely hills, watching one another with broken telescopes”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“The bank to the left of his direction of travel is lined with thick trees, most of which dangle their branches in the water as if they were taking a drink.”
― Adrian J. Walker, From The Storm

“You don’t run thirty miles; you run a single step many times over. That’s all running is; that’s all anything is. If there’s somewhere you need to be, somewhere you need to get to, or if you need to change or move away from where or what you are, then that’s all it takes. A hundred thousand simple decisions, each one made correctly. You don’t have to think about the distance or the destination or about how far you’ve come or how far you have to go. You just have to think about what’s in front of you and how you’re going to move it behind you.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“Like television?”
― Adrian J. Walker, The Other Lives

“A story is built from the things that did not happen as much as from the things that did. Evolution is a history of failures; kingdoms fall because fear stills hearts; love wilts for words left unspoken. Sometimes it blossoms for the same. If each of us is a story, then we are the story of the things we did not do. We are the shadows of quelled urges; negative imprints of missed trains, ignored smiles and unanswered letters. We are the unwritten ink, coloured with events that never occurred. And”
― Adrian J. Walker, Colours

“We’re not really supposed to be on our own, Ed, we’re not built for it. Spend too much time running away from reality and that’s exactly where you get.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“The truth is I was tired of it all. I was tired of the clamor and the din of a world that made less sense by the day and a life that had me just where it wanted. The truth is that the end of the world, for me at least, came as a relief.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“I know now it's certainty itself I have a problem with. Certainty doesn't feel like something we're supposed to have.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“The erta are not a culture, or a breed, or a species. The erta are the fulfilment of a purpose, and not just the one we were assigned by our creator. We are the solution to a problem that evolution has struggled with ever since its first worms slithered from the mud.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The Human Son

“Perhaps there was a reason why we had filled our world with distraction after all. Perhaps there was a reason why we surrounded ourselves with plastic and light and excess. Perhaps our collective consciousness remembered all too well what it was like in darkness, surrounded by wet, rotten wood, mud, and nothing good to eat.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“My job - the thing I spent a third of my life doing so that I could live the other two-thirds regretting it in relative comfort - existed purely because other jobs that didn’t need to exist existed. If there was ever a sign that there were too many people in the world, it was my job.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“then we were within the mist, running blind on flat, dry ground. “I feel like I’m inside a fart,” said Bryce.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“You don’t run thirty miles; you run a single step many times over.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“You can’t run five hundred miles just by clearing your mind,” I spat. Harvey shrugged. “You can’t do it without it either.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“You don’t run thirty miles; you run a single step many times over. That’s all running is; that’s all anything is. If there’s somewhere you need to be, somewhere you need to get to, or if you need to change or move away from where or what you are, then that’s all it takes. A hundred thousand simple decisions, each one made correctly. You don’t have to think about the distance or the destination or about how far you’ve come or how far you have to go. You just have to think about what’s in front of you and how you’re going to move it behind you. Of course, codeine helps.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“West Linton is about a mile away,”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“I was never that much into social media (all those pleas to like this, share that, validate me, laugh at me, support me, update this, or upgrade that—I just couldn’t take it),”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“Ask anyone who has been in a crowd that becomes too strong, where bodies begin to crush you. Is your first instinct to lift others up, or to trample them down? That beast inside you, the one you think is tethered tightly to the post, the one you’ve tamed with art, love, prayer, meditation: it’s barely muzzled.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“We’re made of energy, Ed. Everything is.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“Life screams, and we scream back at it. After a bit of time we learn to be quiet; we learn to muffle it.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“I was only halfway to the age when it’s OK to feel lethargic, cold, bitter, and confused, and yet I felt those things every minute of every day. I was overweight. I ate double portions, drank double measures, avoided exercise. I was inflating like a balloon on an abandoned gas cylinder. My world perplexed me—every day was a haze of confusion.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club

“if you think I’m going to dance like fucking Oprah for you, then you’ve got another thing coming, sunshine.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The Other Lives

“In the end, I thought, this is how we all end up: running alone through our own wilderness, the landscape of disjointed events that form our lives, with nobody to make sense of it but ourselves. The road is ours, and ours alone.”
― Adrian J. Walker, The End of the World Running Club