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

By the time I entered high school, I had forsaken academics altogether in favor of my burgeoning acting career.

My notion of spirituality was different than it is now, but even if I'd been the most fundamentalist of believers, I would have assumed that God had better things to do than arbitrarily smite me with shaking palsy.

If you were to rush into this room right now and announce that you had struck a deal - with God, Allah, Buddha, Christ, Krishna, Bill Gates, whomever - in which the ten years since my diagnosis could be magically taken away, traded in for ten more years as the person I was before - I would, without a moment's hesitation, tell you to take a hike.

The thing that brings people to wail at a wall, or face Mecca, or to go to church, is a search for that feeling of purity.

People want leadership, Mr. President, and in the absence of genuine leadership, they'll listen to anyone who steps up to the microphone. They want leadership. They're so thirsty for it they'll crawl through the desert toward a mirage, and when they discover there's no water, they'll drink the sand.

I can say, "I don't have anything I regret!" But I can also say, "I can go forward in my life the way it is and I don't think I'll accrue any future regrets."