I destroy videos

PostSecret founder Frank Warren spoke in Walnut Creek, Calif., Wednesday night at the opening of an exhibition of the postcards and other submissions of people's secrets. A reported 800 people crowded the Lesher Center to hear Warren tell stories about the 4-year-old project built around the hundreds of thousands of personal secrets strangers around the world have sent to his Maryland home. The project has already spawned four best-selling books and a fifth is on the way, and Warren's blog, where he posts weekly sets of secrets, has had more than 220 million page views.

The gallery show was an opportunity for PostSecret fans to see several hundred of the actual secrets Warren has received over the years, presented artistically and compellingly. This secret, written on a broken VHS tape, reads, "I destroy videos of myself as a child because it pains me to see a time before I ruined my innocence."