• "Try to overcome your doubt. Believe you are beautiful. Look at yourself through someone else's green eyes. Believe someone out there will find you and kiss your skin until you can feel it blister with the heat. Believe in something bigger than your problems and you will be saved. Look up at the beautiful ‘melon sky.’ It will answer all your questions. It will unite us against the machine. My best friend taught me the best way to battle the machine is to ignore it. Ignore the obnoxious hipsters. Ignore those who will put you in a box because of what country you were spat out of. Ignore the judgmental indie rockers. Ignore the trench coat mafia. Ignore the right wing fanatics. Ignore anyone who rubs you the wrong way. Ignore me if you need to but don’t ignore love. It’s what I am fighting for."

— Max Bemis

• “The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on.”

- Chuck Palahniuk

• "Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall"

- Confucius

• "I like flaws and feel more comfortable around people who have them. I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions. "

- Augusten Burroughs

• "Every single person has at least one secret that would break your heart. If we could just remember this, I think there would be a lot more compassion and tolerance in the world."

- Frank Warren

• "I'm selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control, and at times hard to handle. But, if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best"

- Marilyn Monroe

• "To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness.

What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory." - Howard Zinn

• "You are a child of the universe,

no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should. Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy." - Max Ehrmann To be continued,