I love the art form, but working in film can be a disheartening experience.

The self-confidence one builds from achieving difficult things and accomplishing goals is the most beautiful thing of all.

For me, it's either you're part of creation or you're part of destruction. It's inexplicable; it's like breathing, and I can't imagine not doing it.

Trying to be a professional dancer, paying my rent by posing nude for art classes, staring at people staring at me naked. Daring them to think of me as anything but a form they were trying to capture with their pencils and charcoal. I was defiant. Hell-bent on surviving. On making it. But it was hard and it was lonely, and I had to dare myself every day to keep going.

A lot of people are just really confused by me; they don’t know what to think of me, so they try to compartmentalize me or diminish me. Maybe they just feel unsafe. But any time you have an overtly emotional or irrational, negative reaction to something, you’re fearing something that it’s bringing up in you.

You don't have to have a language in common with someone for a sexual rapport. But it helps if the language you don't understand is Italian.

One of the many things I learned from all of this: If you aren't willing to fight for what you believe in, then don't even enter the ring.