After a year or so I really thought I was Howard Hughes. Here I was at eighteen years old, getting all these checks.

Certainly people have a lot tougher situations than I've had to deal with. But I will say we are all dying from the moment we are born. This is not just rehearsal.

I don't look at myself as a leader. I do look at myself as part of a community.

Turning fully toward the glass, I consider what I see. This reflected version of myself, wet, shaking, rumpled, pinched, and slightly stoop, would be alarming were it not for the self-satisfied expression pasted across my face. I would ask the obvious question, 'what are you smiling about?' But I already know the answer: 'It just gets better from here.'

I don't subscribe to any particular doctrine or ideology. I just think that there's kind of a good and bad, the good being life in its purest, happiest form, and the other being the darker side of existence.

I wouldn't have wanted to miss the opportunity to make those three films that didn't do well. They were really important to me, and the things I learned doing them were important to me.

There's an idea I came across a few years ago that I love: My happiness grows in direct proportion to my acceptance and in inverse proportion to my expectations. That's the key for me. If I can accept the truth of 'This is what I'm facing - not what can I expect but what I am experiencing now' - then I have all this freedom to do other things.