It's like Tolstoy said. Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story.

In long-distance running the only opponent you have to beat is yourself, the way you used to be.

I'd be smiling and chatting away, and my mind would be floating around somewhere else, like a balloon with a broken string.

There's a special feeling you get on a veranda that you just can't get anywhere else.

I was twenty-one at the time, about to turn twenty-two. No prospect of graduating soon, and yet no reason to quit school. Caught in the most curiously depressing circumstances. For months I'd been stuck, unable to take one step in any new direction. The world kept moving on; I alone was at a standstill. In the autumn, everything took on a desolate cast, the colors swiftly fading before my eyes. The sunlight, the smell of the grass, the faintest patter of rain, everything got on my nerves.

Holding this soft, small living creature in my lap this way, though, and seeing how it slept with complete trust in me, I felt a warm rush in my chest. I put my hand on the cat's chest and felt his heart beating. The pulse was faint and fast, but his heart, like mine, was ticking off the time allotted to his small body with all the restless earnestness of my own.

Time moves in it special way in the middle of the night.