After working with so many great actors and acting students in film school, it was a whole other thing working with Luke [Kirby].

I feel much more emotion than I did before, and more meaningful emotion and richer emotion than when I was manic. I'm able to experience meaningful things that can only be experienced when I'm stable, like a family.

The patient needs to believe that they can keep the fire while being medicated. The doctors must tell them, "I understand that you experienced something beautiful. I understand that you saw the stars pulsing spirals of fire across the sky like Van Gogh did when he was looking outside the sanitarium window. But you know what? He didn't paint ['Starry Night'] when he was manic. He painted it when he was sane because he didn't need the mania to have the magic."

Fellini was [David] Lynch's master and his biggest idol, and he believed in Fellini's view that film is a dream, it's not reality. It's all about delving into the unconscious.

Imagine having love for someone and being told, "You're not allowed to experience that love because you're not allowed to experience pain." It's a dilemma that so many people with bipolar can't reconcile. They can't find a way out of it. The truth is that you can have both.

That is the beauty when I discovered the label 'Touched With Fire.' That book defined it for me, I could be that. And we just happen to be living in one age of society that put these various labels on the condition. In Aristotle's time, it was the 'inspired state.' In the Native American cultures, you were the shaman. Labels and language creates realities, even if they are false.

Emotions are what drives everyone. You get up in the morning and go do something because the emotion drives you to it.