Dan Pearce, Single Dad Laughing

"Certain girls deserve lots of flowers. You are one of them."

"Don't be mad at me for my success. Be mad at yourself for not doing what it takes to get what I have. Then do something amazing with that emotion."

"I am not where I am because of luck. I am where I am because I took risks others weren’t willing to take. The world rewards the risk takers. It always has. It always will."

"Every person is attractive to somebody. You are. I am. Jim Bob over there is, too. Every person is probably ugly to somebody, too. You are. I am. Jim Bob over there is, too. Don’t take it personally. And, we all need to do ourselves a favor. We need to believe people when they tell us we’re beautiful, handsome, sexy, attractive, hot, or hunkalicious, especially when that someone is somebody that we think is beautiful, handsome, sexy, attractive, hot, or babealicious. Because you know what? They probably really think so. They probably aren’t lying. They probably don’t give a damn that you don’t look like Pamela Anderson."

"The most difficult part of dating as a single parent is deciding how much risk your own child’s heart is worth."

"My dad encouraged me to quit my job and pursue the life that I am about to have. He got excited with me. He was the first one to tell me that I could do it. I am 30 years old, and I still find great power in my own dad telling me it’s possible. I still find great power in my own dad telling me I can do it."

"My entire life, I’ve never been able to understand the concept of not being happy or excited when others were successful or had something good happen to them. It quite honestly is a concept that I cannot grasp."

"Sometimes we need to look at everything going wrong in our lives and admit to ourselves, "I am the only common denominator here."

"I will one day accept death with gratitude if I meet it having lived a life that became truly my own."

"Find a way to change your attitude for the better and your life will change for the better with little effort from you."

"I will never have greater respect than for the man that realizes he was wrong and graciously admits it without a single excuse."

"People usually live up to their expectations. The kid picked first for dodgeball feels a duty to be the best, and to perform the best, and to be better than anyone else. They feel a need to execute. And, the only way they are going to achieve that is to make their body run faster, jump higher, and move quicker. If more fat kids were chosen first for activities and sports and group/team dynamics, they would automatically start to change their lives to fit into the expectations that surround those moments. Any time a child is picked last, they know it’s because people expect the least of them, and so they never actually have a need to rise above that."

"Improvement is always on the schedule for tomorrow. Change is always taking place some time in the future. It’s human nature."

"Who I am is not the same minute to minute or day to day. There are far too many variables for that to ever be true, for me, or for anyone."

"I made a big mistake, and I didn’t use it to make my life better. I used it to be okay with a life less lived. I used it to be okay with mediocrity and the mundane. And I didn’t make myself any better because of it. And that’s not okay with me."

"One of life’s ironies is that the more honest and vulnerable you are, the more others try to discredit you as a fraud and a fake. Shut them up by not caring."

"Most rules are made by people with no authority who want to control and limit you from reaching your true potential. Ignore them, break their rules, and wave at them as you soar past them to greatness."

"Those who truly want greatness must surround themselves with people even greater than they are."

"The world population is nearing seven billion. John Travolta and Farrah Fawcett didn’t procreate and produce all seven thousand million of us. Audrey Hepburn and Burt Lancaster didn’t personally populate the world. Almost every child that was ever born is the byproduct of two everyday people who found each other attractive enough to go jump in the sack together. Almost every child that was ever born came about because two everyday people thought the other was attractive enough to warrant a second glance. If you want proof that attraction belongs to the individual, go sit on a bench at the mall and look at all the different couples walking by. You will believe that there literally is someone for everyone."

"If there is one thing I have come to believe over the years, it’s the notion that there really is somebody for everybody. Every single person is going to look at beauty from a different angle. Every single person is going to be attracted to certain features and characteristics that are completely different than the next person. And… there isn’t a person on earth that everybody on earth finds attractive."