I am essentially optimistic. Being alive is incredible. Life is extraordinary and beautiful. It can be hard and sad and terrifying, but it's all we've got.

And loss of control is always the source of fear. It is also, however, always the source of change.

I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing things and not allowing things outside of myself to distract me or bother me or affect me in any way.

Even a second of freedom is worth more than a lifetime of bondage.

They had dreams but they called them dreams because they were unrelated to reality, they were a distant unknown, an impossibility, they would never come true.

On my first day in jail, a three hundred pound man named Porterhouse hit me in the back of the head with a metal tray. I was standing in line for lunch and I didn't see it coming. I went down. When I got up, I turned around and started throwing punches." (James Frey, pg.1)

Stay. Fight. Live. Take it. Cry. Cry. Cry.