At night we send a runner to drop all the changes off. They can never believe it when I tell them they have to leave the pages in a shed in a back alley. But that's how it works. And a runner picks them up there the next morning.

Any night in this district, anybody can beat any other team. We are that balanced. One team is good one night, another team is good the next night.

Probably the hardest days are when the presenters come in for rehearsal. We're lucky. We have a person from the academy who tapes the pronunciations (of the nominees' names) for us, so we don't usually find out we're saying someone's name wrong, but still you're running everywhere making changes.

Graphics, credits, pronunciation, anything you see or hear, we do. It is important to stay calm.

No one's place in this world is guaranteed. Not everyone is going to get a happy ending. But life isn't about how it ends. It's about the moments between. It's about the small things. The way our loved ones laugh. The sight of a butterfly in the sunlight after a year or two in the darkness. The love and support of an old friend. They might not be with us in body, but they are with us in spirit. The feeling of something we'd thought lost to us forever returned in a single, life-changing moment. Yes, that is simple, even though it might be momentous to us as individuals. Because every day, on this planet, people are born and people die and stranger things happen. But I know my place now, and my purpose. And no matter what trial you have to endure to find that out...
It's worth it.

I was raised in an evangelical Methodist church. Evangelical meant that though you had been baptized and made a member of the church on Sunday morning, you still had to be 'saved' on Sunday night. I wanted to be saved, but I did not think you should fake it.