"My heart has joined the thousand, for my friend stopped running today"
About this Quote
Then the pivot: “for my friend stopped running today.” Adams dodges the blunt noun - death - and chooses motion instead. “Running” suggests a life lived in flight: from danger, from time, from pain, from the self. If the friend “stopped,” the implication is exhaustion, not defeat; mortality as the body’s final refusal to keep sprinting. That euphemism doesn’t soften the loss so much as dignify it, granting the dead a last action rather than a passive end.
The subtext is pastoral: the speaker can’t change the fact of death, but can change its framing. By turning dying into the cessation of a long run, Adams offers a consoling theology without preaching one. The line asks you to imagine the deceased not as extinguished but as released, and the living not as isolated but enrolled among “the thousand” - a chorus of the bereaved whose shared language is the first tool for surviving the day after.
Quote Details
| Topic | Mortality |
|---|---|
| Source | Later attribution: Watership Down (Richard Adams, 2014) modern compilationISBN: 9781780747316 · ID: 8obVDwAAQBAJ
Evidence: Richard Adams. " My heart has joined the Thousand , for my friend stopped running today , " he said to Blackberry , quoting a rabbit proverb . " If only it were not Bigwig , " said Blackberry . " What shall we do without him ? " " The ... Other candidates (1) Richard Adams (Richard Adams) compilation34.1% enly the luck has changed there is news the war is over and everyone bursts out singi |
| Cite | Cite this Quote |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Adams, Richard. (n.d.). My heart has joined the thousand, for my friend stopped running today. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-heart-has-joined-the-thousand-for-my-friend-162285/
Chicago Style
Adams, Richard. "My heart has joined the thousand, for my friend stopped running today." FixQuotes. Accessed February 2, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-heart-has-joined-the-thousand-for-my-friend-162285/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"My heart has joined the thousand, for my friend stopped running today." FixQuotes, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/my-heart-has-joined-the-thousand-for-my-friend-162285/. Accessed 2 Feb. 2026.








