“I wanted to experience New York, to look up and see buildings.” — Haile Gebrselassie Quote

I wanted to experience New York, to look up and see buildings.

You need three things to win: discipline, hard work and, before everything maybe, commitment. No one will make it without those three. Sport teaches you that.

My father didn't think running was sensible. He told me running is just wasting time.

When you run the marathon, you run against the distance, not against the other runners and not against the time.

You know the marathon in my country is just exceptional. It's like soccer in England. If England win the world cup and Ethiopia win the marathon - it's the same.

Because, if we understand how a building is to be produced and we find a way that it can be more simply produced, then obviously we are contributing to building better buildings more easily.

I needed real help in New York and I had no friends. I looked up at those buildings, I couldn't see the sky or nothing, and I said, 'Well, there ain't no mountain high enough,' and I just started - the words just fell out of my mouth, really.

A city, far from being a cluster of buildings, is actually a sequence of spaces enclosed and defined by buildings.

I always lived in old buildings, and I thought about who lived here before. You'd have to be oblivious not to.