"I am, for some reason, actually happy with who I am and the muscle, the bones, and the flub that exist beneath these clothes.I don't need to lose 20 lbs. to be attractive.I don't need to starve myself of the good things of life to be healthy.And, I don't need to chase someone else's ideal of what I should be looking like."

"Certain girls deserve lots of flowers. You are one of them."

"Parenting is the greatest pay it forward system on earth. We don't owe our parents anything. We owe our children everything. The same was true for our parents. The same will be true for our children."

"I made a big mistake, and I didn't use it to make my life better. I used it to be okay with a life less lived. I used it to be okay with mediocrity and the mundane. And I didn't make myself any better because of it.And that's not okay with me."

"What haunts me far more than anything I've ever done are the things I haven't done."

"Sometimes we need to look at everything going wrong in our lives and admit to ourselves, "I am the only common denominator here."

"You want to be popular? It's easy to do. Just be a total weirdo and love yourself for it."

"I do not see the point in dressing and acting and speaking in a way that makes you feel more comfortable and me feel less comfortable."

"Find a way to change your attitude for the better and your life will change for the better with little effort from you."

"Nobody on Earth can tell you how you should live your life. Nobody with any real authority anyway."

"Mirrors have three purposes. To show you who you are. To show you who you were. And to show you who you want to be."

"There are too many people who love me, and accept me, and never try and change me, and who don't condemn me in the slightest, for me to waste even one moment of my life anymore worrying about what other people will think."

"Only those willing to truly risk everything will gain everything. No person ever rose to greatness without the willingness to lose it all."

"I enjoy a torture session on the rowing machine and I also enjoy my mom's homemade peach cobbler. I enjoy flopping like that dead fish with hips that can't lie in dance class, and I also enjoy ordering pizza with my kid, renting a movie, and downing popcorn while we share some special time together. I enjoy seeing how much I can lift at the gym and I also enjoy stuffing a fresh chewy chocolate chip cookie into my face when I'm having a hard day."

"When someone points out your past mistakes, look at them dead in the eyes and follow with, 'and I'd do it all again to have the life I have now."

"If your dreams and goals get derailed, they're not dead. Derailed simply means off-track. Pick 'em up and put 'em back on again."

"Don't we get it? To put our arm around someone who is gay, someone who has an addiction, somebody who lives a different lifestyle, someone who is not what we think they should be doing that has nothing to do with enabling them or accepting what they do as okay by us. It has nothing to do with encouraging them in their practice of what you or I might feel or believe is wrong vs right.It has everything to do with being a good human being. A good person. A good friend."

"Think about the word mould for a moment. A mould is a device into which one crams and smashes something until it becomes the shape that they desire. Don't spend your life letting other people destroy you while they try and force you into their moulds."

"Every person is attractive to somebody. You are. I am. Jim Bob over there is, too. Every person is probably ugly to somebody, too. You are. I am. Jim Bob over there is, too. Don't take it personally.And, we all need to do ourselves a favor. We need to believe people when they tell us we're beautiful, handsome, sexy, attractive, hot, or hunkalicious, especially when that someone is somebody that we think is beautiful, handsome, sexy, attractive, hot, or babealicious.Because you know what? They probably really think so. They probably aren't lying. They probably don't give a damn that you don't look like Pamela Anderson."

"I have known a lot of people in my life, and I can tell you this. Some of the ones who understood love better than anyone else were those who the rest of the world had long before measured as lost or gone. Some of the people who were able to look at the dirtiest, the poorest, the gays, the straights, the drug users, those in recovery, the basest of sinners, and those who were just plain different.They were able to look at them all and only see strength. Beauty. Potential. Hope.And if we boil it down, isn't that what love actually is?"

"When one says, I won't judge you for that, what they're really saying is, I am judging you for that. Think about it. If you walk into my house and I tell you, "I won't judge you for wearing those pants," what am I really saying?"

"As much as I don't want it to be true, the reasons I don't do something define me as a person even more so, perhaps, than the reasons I do something."

"If I could give one message to the bullied, it would be this: You are not alone. You are strong. You have a voice. You are beautiful. You are intelligent. There are many kids who want to speak up for you, but they don't because they are afraid of becoming bullied themselves. There are many of us in the world who love you. I love you. You have the power to end this now. That power is in your voice. Find it. Once you use your voice, bullies want no part of you. If you feel that you lack the courage, fake it until you do. Finally, I know it's hard to see a life that exists beyond high school. It is there, and it is beautiful."

"When I date women now, I have learned to simply not care what they think about it. I'm the same person I always have been. Faithful. Dependable. Kind. Sweet. Funny. Awesome. And if they want to discount me because of something as insignificant and irrelevant as me experiencing attraction to men as well, then they don't get me in their lives. They don't deserve me."

"If only I could change the world around me, perhaps my truth won't one day be the end of me."

"At the border of where I will literally not survive so long as I keep living in so much fear of the harsh judgments of others, I am finally conceding the truth to you all.I am finally conceding the truth to me.I am something other than straight."

"I promise you it doesn't matter what you believe, how strongly you live your beliefs, or how true your beliefs are. Somebody else, somewhere, thinks you are in the wrong. Somebody else, somewhere, thinks your beliefs are senseless or illogical. Somebody else, somewhere, thinks you have it all wrong. In fact, there are a lot of people in this world who do."

"Smile at people everywhere you go. Don't just give them one of those half-smirk/head nod things. Raise your eyebrows, show those teeth, and chuckle while you smile. Next time you're at the store, give a full-hearted smile to at least three complete strangers. You'll be amazed at what this does for them and for you."

"People who love themselves, don't hurt other people. People who love themselves have no reason to ever judge another person on looks. There is simply no need. People who love themselves no longer look at beauty on a sliding scale or as a competition. There is nobody more beautiful or less beautiful than anyone else, including themselves. People who love themselves no longer see fat or skinny, tall or short, fair or dark skin, gay or straight, strong or weak. They only see people. Beautiful, beautiful people."

"My entire life, I've never been able to understand the concept of not being happy or excited when others were successful or had something good happen to them. It quite honestly is a concept that I cannot grasp."

"I really believe that it is honesty about our imperfect selves that makes everyone do better and be better."

"So you were talking crap about me? Hm. I missed it. I was too busy being fabulous."

"Life and love are not about what you know, but about what you know you don't know."

"Don't be mad at me for my success. Be mad at yourself for not doing what it takes to get what I have. Then do something amazing with that emotion."

"The goal was never dependent on the route that took me there. It was always dependent on the heart that got me through whatever route opened itself up to my efforts."

"Dads. It's time to tell our kids that we love them. Constantly. It's time to show our kids that we love them. Constantly. It's time to take joy in their twenty-thousand daily questions and their inability to do things as quickly as we'd like. It's time to take joy in their quirks and their ticks. It's time to take joy in their facial expressions and their mispronounced words. It's time to take joy in everything that our kids are."

"Loving my son, building my son, touching my son, playing with my son, being with my son, these aren't tasks that only super dads can perform. These are tasks that every dad should perform. Always. Without fail."

"Don't judge me for escaping the stresses and cruelty of the world differently than you do."

"So many people hate me and love me for the exact same reasons. This is all the proof I need that my opinion about myself is the only opinion I should ever care about."

"We all have to escape from this thing called life sometimes. Maybe we use substances to do it. Maybe we use religion. Maybe we use exercise. Maybe we use anger. But we all have to do it. *How* we do it is what defines us."

"I am far from a perfect dad. And I always will be. But I'm a damn good dad, and my son will always feel bigger than anything life can throw at him. Why? Because I get it. I get the power a dad has in a child's life, and in a child's level of self-belief. I get that everything I ever do and ever say to my son will be absorbed, for good or for bad."

"So you want to be famous? You want to inspire large groups of people? You want to be recognized and appreciated by thousands or even millions? Stop trying to do it by speaking to the masses. Do it by speaking to individuals. If what you have is truly amazing and unique and worth sharing, individuals will share it. It is always about the individual, no matter how big you get. Remember that."

"When you do talk to people, share what you are. Stop focusing on all the things that you aren't. Stop focusing on all of the physical features that you think people won't like about you. Stop focusing on your inabilities or lack of talent. Instead, focus on those physical features that you know people already love about you. Focus on your abilities and the talents that you do have. You have been blessed with all of the above, and that makes you worth getting to know in my book."

"The world is so obsessed with defining sexuality for everyone and attaching labels to it. Any time any person openly leaves the sexual norm, their sexuality becomes, more often than not, the absolute defining characteristic of that person. It becomes the first thing people think about and often the first thing they mention. Every other part of that person all but disappears."

"Confidence, Noun. A condition where one knows what he is good at no matter how much you try to convince him otherwise."

"One of the greatest tragedies I can think of is for a person to die having never fully questioned the life he was born into."

"What would it hurt for me to give that homeless guy a couple bucks? Who the hell cares if he spends it on beer? Maybe beer is a step up for him from the harder stuff that knocked him onto the streets in the first place. Maybe, just maybe, he's actually going to spend it on food (homeless people do eat, right?). Maybe, he really is a desperate human being who is trying to change his situation."

"A lot of people don't like me. I take that as evidence that I have done something beautifully different or something extraordinary."

"Think of the most discouraging thing that you are currently carrying or the biggest project you can't seem to tackle. Forget about how it happened, forget about how you got there, just look at the clock, and before that number changes, do one little thing to make it better. After you do, enjoy your moment of victory, and then do it again. In less than the time it takes you to blink, the past will burden you no more."

"Fishing is much less about the fishing, and much more about the time alone with your kid, away from the hustle and bustle of the everyday."