There is a definite correlation between the mind and the body.

My heart is so light that it's amazing. I get to play all this grief, all this loss, all this disaster and chaos. It's hysterically funny. I am very light.

For people with mental illness, taking care of the body is not an automatic thing. The mind is in such chaos it's hard to come up with a plan. So to people like us, it's more important than ever to follow a regimen.

Feel the power of your legs, hear the orchestra playing, see the audience - anything to make the image more real. The image has to be specific. You can't just say to yourself, 'I'll do my best.' You have to have a mental blueprint of that role in your mind.

I carry Yeats with me wherever I go. He's my constant companion. I always can find some comfort in Yeats no matter what the situation is. Months and months and months go by and I know I need to switch to Shelley or somebody else, but right now Yeats is enough for me.

My quality of life is more amazing than I ever could've imagined in those 20 years of struggling with illness. In those 20 years, I did not know the meaning of the word hope. It was just a bleak, difficult existence. With all the gifts, with all the successes that I had, it was still an incredibly bleak way of living and I want to be a messenger of hope.

I think I existed on four hours sleep a night for four years.