"My family's failures are my inspiration."

"The bruises on my knees are from masturbating all weekend."

"Sometimes I hope to be hit by a drunk driver, just to teach my alcoholic father a lesson."

"I wish I had more reasons to get on Facebook than just to play Farmville."

"I want to make a difference in the world."

Those sad, quirky and hopeful messages are just a small sampling of the more than half a million secrets people have sent anonymously to a man named Frank Warren, who began a project in 2004 called PostSecret.

It was a little over five years ago when Warren, often called "the most trusted stranger in America," had an idea for an art-meets-psychology experiment, which lead him to print off 3,000 postcards that had simple, yet specific, instructions:

"You are invited to anonymously contribute a secret to a group art project. Your secret can be a regret, fear, betrayal, desire, confession or childhood humiliation. Reveal anything — as long as it is true and you have never shared it with anyone before."

Warren put the postcards in various places like art galleries, inside the pages of library books and at subway stations around Maryland and Washington, D.C.. The result has been nothing short of extraordinary. He has received enough secrets to spawn art exhibits, various documentary-like videos, a Website, Facebook and Twitter pages, five books and now a national university tour, which visits USF on Feb. 23.

This article appears in Jan 13-19, 2010.