It’s the letter a with a swirl around it, an a curled into the fetal position, just waiting to be born.

The letter a stands for the beginning.

Everyone has a story, and every story has a beginning.

Life begins @ conception.

"Imagine that you are creating a fabric of human destiny with the object of making men happy in the end, giving them peace and rest at last, but that it was essential and inevitable to torture to death only one tiny creature -- that baby beating its breast with its fist, for instance -- and to found that edifice on its unavenged tears, would you consent to be the architect on those conditions? Tell me, and tell the truth."

"No, I wouldn't consent," said Alyosha softly
-Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

Heckling is an act of cowardice.

If you want to speak,
get up in front of the microphone and speak,
don't sit in the dark hiding.
It's easy to hide and shout and waste people's time.
Billy Connolly

Women are not in love with me but with the picture of me on the screen. I am merely the canvas upon which the women paint their dreams. Rudolph Valentino

"The things a man has to have are hope and confidence in himself against odds, and sometimes he needs somebody, his pal or his mother or his wife or God, to give him that confidence. He's got to have some inner standards worth fighting for or there won't be any way to bring him into conflict. And he must be ready to choose death before dishonor without making too much song and dance about it. That's all there is to it." Clark Gable

SELF HARM

(stolen from Huffington Post UK)

(OK, I'm just going to say I don't get why this site as a "insert link" option when it just links right back to this freaking page anyway)

There are many widely held beliefs about self-harm which are simply wrong.
If we don't talk about it we can't educate people about self-harm.
It is NOT a failed suicide attempt nor a method of attention seeking.

In most instances, it's a coping mechanism.

The myths surrounding self-harm lead to a massive stigma being attached to it
as people struggling with self-harm are often viewed in a very negative light - as selfish, difficult and weird.

If we take the time to help people really understand why people self-harm
and how many people it affects,
we can change the mood from one of animosity and fear to one of support -
which is exactly what these people most need.

Any story is about a host of things. It is about the author; it is about the world the author sees and deals with and lives in; it is about the words chosen and the way those words are deployed; it is about the story itself and what happens in the story; it is about the people in the story; it is polemic; it is opinion. -- Neil Gaiman

A sign of maturity is when you can listen to constructive criticism without pouting -- Charlie Daniels