The way I survived growing up in Jersey City was by being funny. It wasn't by being tough. Nobody thought of me as a tough kid, except for the kids I beat up.

This crazy little party girl who loves to enjoy life actually has a purpose. So, that's really the core of why I've survived so many years and I can go and I can fall down and I can get back up. Why? Because I know why I'm here. That's the question that a lot of people need to answer when they do fall is, 'Why am I here?' If you can answer that question, you'll be able to dust yourself off and shine like a phoenix out of ashes.

I heard that the guy who invented the Jehovah's Witnesses was a Mason.That kind of turned me off, because when something's mysterious, all you can do is be scared of it. "He's a Mason? Ugh. It must be evil!" I didn't know much about it, so I was scared. Now I actually admire those guys - they're pretty talented. They founded a lot of the world that we look at today.

I used to go over to my friend's house and we'd watch VCR tapes, three of them a day, and I was like, "I could come up with better stories than this." And I've wanted to write films ever since.

You can keep knocking me down forever, I'll keep getting up and trying.

It's the board I had a problem with. I could totally handle being in the water and stuff. I came here to do my own stunts. Water! Ocean! Action! Big waves! That water, that water has tamed me. You can feel that the world is connected to it.

I think empathy is a beautiful thing. I think that's the power of film though. We have one of the most powerful, one of the greatest communicative tools known to man.