I might not be able to use the word "hope," but I could certainly use the word "optimism." I'm very optimistic. I don't feel that it helps to be pessimistic. At some point in my life I made a conscious decision that I would try to be optimistic - not blind to anything at all - but to always hear the way that had the best chance for happiness.

But if there was embellishment, it only had to do with the facts.

I have brothers and was a tomboy, if that's still a designation. It wasn't a stretch for me to think and write as a 13-year-old boy - it is freeing.

...whom he had saved from a life of excessive freedom

We passed over in a sweep of sorrow that would persist into our small forever. We just keep going.

Don't read anything except what destroys the insulation between yourself and your experience.

Time was rushing around me like water around a big wet rock. The only difference is, I was not so durable as stones. Very quickly I would be smoothed away.