For Stars With a Cause, Pain Is Worth It

November 1, 2009, The New York Times — In the weeks before the New York City Marathon, as he grappled with shin splints and a sore Achilles’ tendon, the actor Edward Norton fixated on a mantra he had plucked from a book by the Japanese author Haruki Murakami:

“Pain is inevitable,” the passage reads. “Suffering is optional.”