There are moments in our lives that define the people we will become in the future, like a symptom before an ailment, or the catalyst before the cure.

You know-portraits are odd things." "How do you figure?" I asked. "Well at the time, that portrait told the whole story. It told the truth. We were a family-a happy family. Now that same portrait just looks like a lie.

The price of coming from a small town is that everyone knows your story. Your book has been read, shelved, dusted, and re-read by everybody.

Popularity is like a girl in class that you can't ignore. She give you eyes when no one looks then turns to her friends and laughs some more.

I guess it was only fitting that to them PUNK was a four letter word. However, to people like Dylan and I-punk was our hearts-our souls. We grew up with a lot of uncertainties. To be a teenager isn't always pretty, and our music reflected that.

Society gets by from the help of its citizens.

I guess what's most important is that we chose to live with our hearts open and to let our experiences show us the way towards our brightest days.

Eventually, that feeling fades, but there is always the memory of those days. When you’re young, everything is butterflies. What I mean is—it’s all new. I guess he was telling you to still believe, to hold on to your butterflies.

Couples swayed and embraced to the beat as the singer's vocals soared above a group of confused teenagers and twenty-something's.

What were we, but kids with apartments and jobs anyway?

Christopher was wearing a suit and adorned make-up. As long as I had known him, he never wore a suit or make-up. The look of him defenseless to his appearance saddened me.

That night, he laid in his bed thinking about all the possibilities. They came like waves in his mind. At first they came slow, then gradually built up speed, cresting into full on dreams, until finally, they broke onto the shore with all of their reality. First dreams, then nightmares.

Dream-start with dream. Start tonight-become who you want-dream big!" He became animated at this point, "No money needed for dreams. Dreams are free.

In times such as these, life often begs us to seek answers when in reality there are only questions available.

It’s funny how books can change you. You open up a book and one minute you are who you’ve always been, then you read some random passage and you become someone else.

All our good and bad memories—they were like our B-side diaries. They were like those songs on old dusty punk albums that no one listened to anymore.