By acquiescing in an act that causes such suffering to a living creature, who among us is not diminished?

My kids are starting to notice I'm a little different from the other dads. 'Why don't you have a straight job like everyone else?' they asked me the other day. I told them this story: In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, 'Look at me...I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you...You're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you.' And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, 'Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest.' So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day.

Know the rules well, so you can break them effectively.

If, living in the world, you refuse to be a part of it, you will help others out of this chaos - not in the future, not tomorrow, but now.

To creative people, the compendium of the white man's dialect are unfashionable, because their creations are more than what the tongue could say.

I can’t change the world, I can only change how I choose to live in it.

If you're wonderful in any way somebody will fuck with you. Just like if you're horrible in any way they're gonna fuck with you. The world is for the average and the common. Those are the people who never hurt - they just fall asleep. The rest of us, we're The Walking Wounded.

You’ll learn, as you get older, that rules are made to be broken. Be bold enough to live life on your terms, and never, ever apologize for it. Go against the grain, refuse to conform, take the road less traveled instead of the well-beaten path. Laugh in the face of adversity, and leap before you look. Dance as though EVERYBODY is watching. March to the beat of your own drummer. And stubbornly refuse to fit in.

If, living in the world, you refuse to be a part of it, you will help other out of this chaos - not in the future, not tomorrow, but now.

If what you create seems to turn out much stranger than who you are as a person, it's probably because your heart is talking.