"The inner fire is the most important thing mankind possesses," writes Danish poet Edith Sodergran, a conviction shared by Mary Lou Retton, 1984 gold-medal winning gymnast, who said after her victory, "Each of us has a fire in our hearts for something. It's our goal in life to find it and keep it lit." In Nikos Kazantzakis's incandescent novel Zorba the Greek, the irrepressible hero shouts out to the mountain winds that batter his island home of Crete, "you won't put my fire out!" In the book's closing words, the English schoolteacher-narrator describes the literally inspiring effect Zorba's fire had on him: "My life with Zorba had enlarged my heart; some of his words had calmed my soul. This man with infallible instinct . . . without losing his breath, had reached the peak of effort and had even gone further."

Phil Cousineau, The Olympic Odyssey