Because I feared I couldn't walk to Newton Centre without her, I needed to hike through desert, snow and woods alone.Childhood is a wilderness.

The trees were friendly, they gave me rest and shadowed refuge. Slipping through them, I felt safe and competent. My whole body was occupied. I had little energy to think or worry.

Beneath hot sun, desert roses bloomed. Under cold moon, I still refused to.

Water was liquid silver, water was gold. It was clarity—a sacred thing. Drinking was no longer something to take for granted. I’d never needed to consider water before.

There was so little I wanted to carry. Packing my backpack took me all of four minutes

The bravest thing I ever did was leave there. The next bravest thing I did was come back, to make myself heard.

I’d believed I needed to be steady in myself before I could function with others—but surviving alone no longer felt like a good way either.

I realized that the most empowering important thing was actually simply taking care of myself.

I was promising myself strength.I had to write it, say it, make the effort and fake it before I actually believed I could do it.

I was the director of my life, it was already true, and I would soon lead myself to my dreamed-of destinations.It was the task of my one thousand miles of solitude.

I no longer needed to peel myself of my skin, or to hide. To Dash the colorless ephemeral things that existed just beneath my surface were as vivid as the beauty marks he traced on my cheek.

When writing fiction, you learn to only put things and characters in, that are going to progress your story. There is something to be learned about that approach in real life

Dreams have always expanded our understanding of reality by challenging our boundaries of the real, the possible.

It's easy to fool the eye but it's hard to fool the heart.

‎"Sincerity is the biggest part of selling anything -- including the Christian plan of salvation.

And of course there is nothing better than wearing the same T-shirt for days and not brushing my hair for weeks.

Google is very much a not-invented-here, build-it-ourselves culture.

When indeed shall we learn that we are all related one to the other, that we are all members of one body?

For the kind of thing that we were showing, the budget was sufficient. As we were speaking of in Haiti, we had not done that before in exactly this form and we had to have costumes for it.

You have to be a soldier and a veteran, or a soldier who sacrificed your life for your country.

Because primarily of the power of the Internet, people of modest means can band together and amass vast sums of money that can change the world for some public good if they all agree.