I believe good plans are the best way to maximize fun, avoid disaster, and possibly, save the world. I spend a lot of my time making them.

It thought about the magic that happens when you tell a story right, and everybody who hears it not only loves the story, but they love you a little bit, too, for telling it so well. Like I love Ms. Washington, in spite of myself, the first time I heard her. When you hear somebody read a story well, you can't help but think there's some good inside them, even if you don't know them.

And all the best words together couldn't hold the happiness.

In the morning I'm like a snake in the spring: I need to lie out on a warm rock and let the sun sink into me before I can start wiggling around and get on with the day.

I closed my eyes, put my right hand on top of the book, and passed it lightly across the cover. It was cool and smooth like a stone from the bottom of the brook, and it stilled me. A whole other world is inside there, I thought to myself, and that's where I want to be.

...how do you run and play when you feel like there are bricks of the heaviest sadness weighing down every part of your body? How do you laugh and talk when there are no laughs left inside of you?

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and filled myself up with the breeze from the valley. Then I let it out slow so it could get back to its travels, with a little bit of me added to it.