Not just beautiful, though--the stars are like the trees in the forest, alive and breathing. And they're watching me.

My peak? Would I even have one? I hardly had had anything you could call a life. A few ripples, some rises and falls. But that's it. Almost nothing. Nothing born of nothing. I'd loved and been loved, but I had nothing to show. It was a singularly plain, featureless landscape. I felt like I was in a video game. A surrogate Pacman, crunching blindly through a labyrinth of dotted lines. The only certainty was my death.

The pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.

Exerting yourself to the fullest within your individual limits: that's the essence of running, and a metaphor for life

Death leaves cans of shaving cream half-used.

He appeared before me and departed. We were not able to speak to or touch each other. But in that short interval, he transformed many things inside me. He literally stirred my mind and body the way a spoon stirs a cup of cocoa, down to the depths of my internal organs and my womb.

Judging the mistakes of strangers is an easy thing to do - and it feels pretty good.