There's something I have about being Canadian - there's a distance it gives you when you live in the States and operate in American culture. You approach familiar things a different way; you come at it from a different angle. It's a trait that runs through a lot Canadian artists' work and actors' work and musicians' - that kind of special remove.

One of the great things about Parkinson's, in a superficial way, is it relieved me of vanity. I don't worry about what I look like, because it's literally out of my hands. But on a deeper level, it gives you a real humility, because you have to deal every day with the fact that you compromise.

I might have skipped class, but I didn't miss any lessons.

With Parkinson's, it's like you're in the middle of the street and you're stuck there in cement shoes and you know a bus is coming at you, but you don't know when. You think you can hear it rumbling, but you have a lot of time to think. And so you just don't live that moment of the bus hitting you until it happens. There's all kinds of room in that space.

So what I say about Tracy is this: Tracy's big challenge is not having a Parkinson's patient for a husband. It's having me for a husband. I happen to be a Parkinson's patient.

Look at the choices you have, not the choices that have been taken away from you. In them, there are whole worlds of strength and new ways to look at things.

The way I look at life, and the way I look at the reality of Parkinson's, is that sometimes it's frustrating and sometimes it's funny. I need to look at it that way, and I think other people will look at it that way.