One's attitude towards oneself is the single most important factor in healing and staying well.

People have taught me what most doctors don't learn, in other words, when somebody does better than expected, the doctor will tell them they're doing very well and to keep it up. I learned to say, "You didn't die when you were supposed to so what's going on?", and they always had a story to tell me.

I was born an ugly duckling due to my mother's ill health. She wasn't supposed to be pregnant, there were all kinds of complications, she couldn't survive a cesarean section etc. She said, "They didn't hand me a child, they handed me a purple melon." I heard that when I had grown up and had no idea of the whole story because the family album had pictures of a covered carriage and my mother smiling so I assumed I was asleep.

You too are a work of art.

You can see people draw the past, present and future as well as dream about it. You go to bed at night and have a dream that says there's a lump in your right breast and the doctor who is foreign, with an accent tells you it's cancer.

For me, a lovely day is any day I wake up.

My view of addiction, whether it's drugs, food, alcohol or any list of other things, is the same reason I asked my mother why I wasn't a drug addict or alcoholic, which is because when you're not loved, often people become an addict and self destructive. Now the opposite of love is indifference and even worse is rejection and abuse, and I meet those people.