When you pick up a novel from the bed side table, you put down your own life at the same time and you become another person for the duration.
I feel like you get more bees with honey. But that doesn't mean I don't get frustrated in my life. My way of dealing with frustration is to shut down and to think and speak logically.
In the last couple of years I've been facing down a lot of the demons of the past and trying to find out, who I am, It's something I think I'll be doing for the rest of my life.
I never really had a career, to be honest with you. I never in my life sat down and planned it. I have thought, 'Oh, I'd like to do this,' like anybody would. But I'm not the type that says, 'If I do this, it will lead to that.'
Some of Jimmy Stewart's performance in 'It's A Wonderful Life' is some of the most disturbing performance he ever did, when he falls apart and when he breaks down.
Life is very, very short, and you can choose to live it how you want. You can choose to dumb yourself down and not express yourself just so you can fit in, just so people won't dislike you.
At the very least, we want everything to go on hold for a while because there is this feeling that we're heading down a path in a way that we never, ever intended when we were 18 and dreaming of what life would be like.
It has taken me most of my adult life to come to terms with who I am. To do that, I had to break free of attitudes that brought me down.
Your children are grown and your career has slowed down - all the stuff that took up so much attention is gone, and you're left with expansive time and space. You have to reimagine who you are and what life is about.
One of the problems that we have as American journalists is that we bring the American cultural baggage with us and we plop it down and it follows us around and that's just a fact of life.
And I always think of life like a giant wave. You know, it rises and it crests and it flies, and it's just magnificent, and then it crashes. And for a lot of people, when it crashes, that's the end, and they go down the deep, dark hole of depression.
Sometimes I felt as a writer I was purging, and it almost hurt to purge to that level. Now it doesn't feel that way, maybe because I'm older. Maybe life has given me some punches, but it didn't knock me down.
My mother has been the greatest influence on my life, morally. When I get right down to it, my mother and father are two people I can count on no matter what.
On a serious level, I wouldn't tell the press if I was in a relationship or not. I wouldn't ever reveal that, because it takes you down a certain road... I have no desire to be courting the press with my love life.
Storytelling is my currency. It's my only worth. The only thing of value I have in this life is my ability to tell a story, whether in print, orating, writing it down or having people acting it out.
My iPhone has changed my life - I spend hours taking photos of the sidewalk as I walk down the street. I like the casualness, that it's low-resolution.
When life knocks you down, try to land on your back. Because if you can look up, you can get up. Let your reason get you back up.
You can learn from everyone, the president or the cleaner. You need teachers in life, but they're not always school teachers or professors. You learn from ordinary people. You learn from travel, from just walking down the street.
It's rare that I turn down a photo or autograph, because these are the people that support me, so why not support them. I love it and I invite it. I love what I do and the whole 'celebrity' life and all that.
No no there wasn't any planned 14th season, we all saw the writing on the wall. The ratings had been going down and so fourth, that curve goes on every show and in everybody's life.
I go down to Newport and Huntington a lot. It's more crowded than where I grew up on Phillip Island, but I think it's helped me adjust to life in America - getting into the water as much as I can.
