If they could say that to their patients, it could be a way to treatment, as in both working on it and preserving it. That could give a patient the faith to fully experience that beauty, without reliving the torment.

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.

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.

If they could say that to their patients, it could be a way to treatment, as in both working on it and preserving it. That could give a patient the faith to fully experience that beauty, without reliving the torment.

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.

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.

David Lynch was actually the one who first inspired me to become a filmmaker when I was in high school. His films just took me to that dream place that lifts you out of the norm, out of the everyday life, and that is kind of what allured me.