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.

Love is the most universal experience. There is nothing more important than love, there is nothing more meaningful than love, and there is nothing more human in people's relationships than love.

Vincent van Gogh was sane when he painted that piece of art, because when you you feel the mania and depression, you have all the heaven and hell your heart has ever experienced that you can tap into, to be able to create something that can last several lifetimes.

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."

Do you think you can love too much? Or experience too much beauty, at the cost of too much pain? Do you think when art is defined by expressing so much beauty and so much pain, just to be able to cope with both - and bring other people something creatively beautiful at the cost of that pain - that we can draw a line of 'normalcy'? It's important to think about.

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

If I were to peruse a survey of label options, as they exist now, they either sound like a time bomb disorder or manic depression or Bipolar divide or mental illness. How can I find an identity in that? It certainly isn't something I can bring up in conversation, without a reaction of judgement or even fear.