“I don’t worry about identity theft, because I don’t even know who I am as a person. So if I’m not even in possession of my own identity, how can it be stolen from me?”

“I worry about identity theft. What’s to stop somebody from cloning me to drain the cash from my bank account? And it’d be just as easy for my clone to pretend to be me as it is for me to pretend to be me.”

“When I really worry about something, I don’t just fool around. I even have to go to the bathroom when I worry about something. Only, I don’t go. I’m too worried to go. I don’t want to interrupt my worrying to go. ”

“You know what? Don’t even worry about it,” I said. “Cory Wheeler already asked me. I can tell him I changed my mind.”“Who the hell is Corky Wheeler?”

“Being a reader is how I choose to spend my life, every aspect of it, inside and outside of the classroom. I often wonder whether my identity as a reader, someone who reads voraciously and always has a book recommendation, is all I have to offer. That may be true, but it is an oversimplification. How can I express the extent to which reading has shaped who I am as a human being? Although I see myself as kind, I am not a demonstrative person. If I have ever brought you a book unasked for, know that I cared. I said everything to you that I wanted with that book. I have enough wisdom to acknowledge that an author’s words are more eloquent than my own. When we meet and I discover that we have read and loved the same books, we are instant friends. We know a great deal about each other already if we both read. I imagine this is why I strive so hard to get people around me to read. If you don’t read, I don’t know how to communicate with you. I know this is a shortcoming. Perhaps my mother, who worried that reading would make me socially stunted, was half right. I can never express who I really am in my own words as powerfully as my books can.”

“The closer I get, the faster I have to go. Otherwise, I might be late to the very place where I’m not even expected. Adding to my tardiness is the fact that I don’t even know where I’m going. And I can’t get from here to there when I don’t even know where I am, let alone where I’m going. All I know is I’m going fast, but not fast enough.”