This is what I want. This is the only thing I've ever wanted. Everything else—every single second of every single day that has come before this very moment, this kiss—has meant nothing.

That's the thing about faith. It works.

I don't understand how everything changes, how the layers of your life get buried. Impossible. At some point, at some time, we must all explode.

But it's not about knowing. It is simply about going forward.

I have had to give up so much, so many selves and lives already. I have grown up and out of the rubble of my old lives, of things and people I have cared for.

No wonder the regulators decided on segregation of boys and girls: Otherwise, it would have been a nightmare, this feeling angry and self-conscious and confused and annoyed all the time.

Running is a mental sport, more than anything else. You're only as good as your training, and your training is only as good as your thinking.