Strength isn't about bearing a cross of grief or shame. Strength comes from choosing your own path, and living with the consequences.

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. ... Because every day, on this planet, people are born and people die and stranger things happen.(Armintrout, All Souls' Night, 367)

Well, I always did want to go out in a Braveheart kind of way. I'll just have to think of something cool to yell before they cut my head off.

Movies like 'The Interview' and 'Team America: World Police' don't often show the realities of life in North Korea and the human rights violations perpetrated by the government there.

I'd never been a good damsel in distress. I was a "hands-on" damsel.

It was the damnedest thing, life. Once you decide exactly how things are going to go, something or someone comes along and messes it all up.

I couldn't take much more of this. Being the object two men competed for wasn't as glamorous as it sounded in the movies. The two men who both wanted one hundred percent of my time weren't dashing, international playboys. They were undead and surprisingly immature, considering the youngest was just over a hundred years old.