As a teenager, even as a younger girl, I had some depression but no one really noticed that it was depression nor did I know in those days that that's what it was but I did feel different from other people.

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.

I'd go somewhere where no one spoke. I would take a stack of books up to my hips, and I'd read nonstop. And I'd be reading naked.

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.

There is a dog in every man.

Please don't mistake who I am for who the character is.

As a teenager, even as a younger girl, I had some depression but no one really noticed that it was depression nor did I know in those days that that's what it was but I did feel different from other people.