No matter how much fame you have, it's not something that belongs to you. If I'm famous, that doesn't belong to me-that belongs to you. If you can't remember who I am, I'm no longer famous.

In terms of what happened over that hiatus that I took, I just rested. I spent that time with my family, during their really formative years, and enjoyed that, and I messed with pills and new medications that help me to deal with dyskinesia and some other things I was struggling with, that I don't have as much now because of medication to counter the side effects. So, it just seemed like the right time to do it.

'Why do you think it is...', I asked Dr. Cook ... 'that brain surgery, above all else-even rocket science-gets singled out as the most challenging of human feats, the one demanding the utmost of human intelligence?' [Dr. Cook answered,] 'No margin for error.'

It is ironic that in the same year we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the discovery of DNA, some would have us ban certain forms of DNA medical research. Restricting medical research has very real human consequences, measured in loss of life and tremendous suffering for patients and their families.

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.

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.

Control is illusory. No matter what university you go to, no matter what degree you hold, if your goal is to becomes master of your own destiny, you have more to learn.