I have been through a lot of medical trauma. I was diagnosed with breast cancer .

So this is always the key: you have to write the book you love, the book that's alive in your heart. That's the one you have to write.

Nobody gets to pick their time to die, but living every day to the max is something we all get to do.

I wanted to show what it's really like for 98 percent of the world's population [in the third world]. Plus, I also see there are an awful lot of young people out there doing good things, and I wanted to give them a platform.

I wanted to write about the third world and had the opportunity to go live in the trenches, so to speak.

Because I want you to know that your're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen. And I thought I should introduce myself. I mean, we should get to know each other. Since you're the girl I intend to marry. ~Mark Gianni

She did know that the journey to happiness was laborious and strewn with seeds of suffering. She guessed that it was probably a place each person had to seek for herself, that each heart had to find on its own.