When I did a study of all the coming-of-age movies that meant a lot to me, whether it was 'The Graduate' or 'Rebel Without a Cause' or 'Dead Poet's Society,' they all had that timeless feel. None of them were completely married to the details of their age. They felt timeless in their treatment of it. That's what made them resonate with me.

Even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there.

Just tell me how to be different in a way that makes sense.

I don't know what's wrong with me. It's like all I can do is keep writing this gibberish to keep from breaking apart.

I think the idea is that every person has to live for his or her own life and then make the choice to share it with other people. Maybe that is what makes people "participate.

So, I guess we are who we are for alot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there. We can still do things. And we can try to feel okay about them.

So, I looked up, and we were in this giant dome like a glass snowball, and Mark said that the amazing white stars were really only holes in the black glass of the dome, and when you went to heaven, the glass broke away, and there was nothing but a whole sheet of star white, which is brighter than anything but doesn't hurt your eyes. It was vast and open and thinly quiet, and I felt so small.