Whether it's good for anything or not, cool or totally uncool, in the final analysis what's most important is what you can't see but can feel in your heart.

With each passing moment I'm becoming part of the past. There is no future for me, just the past steadily accumulating.

Sitting on the floor, I'd replay the past in my head. Funny, that's all I did, day after day after day for half a year, and I never tired of it. What I'd been through seemed so vast, with so many facets. Vast, but real, very real, which was why the experience persisted in towering before me, like a monument lit up at night. And the thing was, it was a monument to me.

What we call the present is given shape by an accumulation of the past.

As with marathon runs and lengths of toilet paper, there had to be standards to measure up to.

I'm a writer, not a professional runner. It's fun and it helps me write. I need powerful concentration.

Writing is fun - at least mostly. I write for four hours every day. After that I go running. As a rule, 10 kilometers (6.2 miles). That's easy to manage.