John L. Parker Jr. Quote

He was filled with loss and an off-brand of nostalgia for events that were supposed to become part of his past but now wouldn't at all. In the mind's special processes, a ten-mile run takes far longer than the minutes reported by a grandfather clock. Such time, in fact, hardly exists in the real world; it is all out on the train somewhere, and you only go back to it when you are out there. He and Mize had been through two solid years of such regular time-warp escapes together. There was something different about that, something beyond friendship; they had a way of transferring pain back and forth, without the banality of words.

John L. Parker Jr.

He was filled with loss and an off-brand of nostalgia for events that were supposed to become part of his past but now wouldn't at all. In the mind's special processes, a ten-mile run takes far longer than the minutes reported by a grandfather clock. Such time, in fact, hardly exists in the real world; it is all out on the train somewhere, and you only go back to it when you are out there. He and Mize had been through two solid years of such regular time-warp escapes together. There was something different about that, something beyond friendship; they had a way of transferring pain back and forth, without the banality of words.

Tags: running

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About John L. Parker Jr.

John L. Parker Jr. (born 1947) is an American writer and the author of the cult classic novel Once A Runner and the more recently published Again to Carthage and Racing the Rain. The trilogy chronicles the struggles of Quenton Cassidy, a middle-distance runner.
Cassidy, a passionate, obsessive runner, is first introduced in Once A Runner, published in 1978. Thirty years later Parker follows the career of Cassidy in a second book Again to Carthage, published in late 2007. In "Once a Runner" Cassidy is a college athlete who is suspended from school and prohibited from competing in his university's track meets. He trains in private hoping to compete in disguise. In "Again to Carthage," ten years have passed for Cassidy. After taking a break from running, he begins training again in earnest trying to recapture the feeling and the glory of the past, this time through long-distance running. 2015's "Racing the Rain" recounts Cassidy's early years.