I laughed. “You’re too young to be so … pessimistic,” I said, using the English word. “Pessi-what?” “Pessimistic. It means looking only at the dark side of things.” “Pessimistic … pessimistic …” She repeated the English to herself over and over, and then she looked up at me with a fierce glare. “I’m only sixteen,” she said, “and I don’t know much about the world, but I do know one thing for sure. If I’m pessimistic, then the adults in this world who are not pessimistic are a bunch of idiots.

I've always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I'm wrong, but I won't change.

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

If you're in pitch blackness, all you can do is sit tight until your eyes get used to the dark.

It seems to me, though, that you always understand very well what I can't say very well. Trouble is I end up being even worse at saying things well.

Here, too, a brand-new day is beginning. It could be a day like all the others, or it could be a day remarkable enough in many ways to remain in the memory. In either case, for now, for most people, it is a blank sheet of paper.

Some things, you know, if you say them, it makes them not true?