I realized not long ago that by the time I leave this Earth, no matter when it is I will have officially only spent approximately 14 years of my life where I did not have to deal with cancer.
With this realization, came a growing need for men and women willing to take up arms in an effort to protect our American way of life and the freedoms so many of our ancestors died to entrench.
In movies and TV, we tend to fall into tropes about how characters might get out of problems. But when you look at real life, you realize that there is a lot of drama of not being able to get out of the problems.
The big turn in the late '90s was that I realized I was going to be doing this for a long time. I was fairly sure I was going to be an actor for the rest of my life, which I think calmed me down.
I just want girls to realize, everybody's born a way for a reason, and you are who you are. You should just be yourself at all times. The only way you're going to get through life, happily, is being yourself.
It really wasn't until I was in college when I began to write more and more, and I realized I was scheduling my entire life around my writing.
I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with fixed hours, a fixed salary, and very little original thinking to do.
But people who think they can project themselves into deafness are mistaken because you can't. And I'm not talking about imagining what a deaf person's whole life is like I even mean just realizing what it is like for an instant.
Although we are physically laid to rest, we meet again and again to make amends. If I hurt someone in this life, I'll have to relive it to make amends. It helps you realize that by hurting someone, you are actually hurting yourself.
I have walked away from friendships when I've realized that someone smiles to someone's face and talks about them the minute they walk out of a room. I have no room in my life for that kind of negative energy anymore.
People in life take on certain stories and say, 'I'm going to be defined by this story and I'm going to live up to every inch of this story.' Sometimes you realize the story isn't fulfilling you and in fact you're not living the life that you're give...
There were a lot of little triggers that made me realize that life is now; life is happening while we're preoccupied with stupidities. Of course, growing. Of course, becoming a mother and understanding life from another perspective.
What society doesn't realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they don't now, or not very much. That whole respect for serious literature and learning has disappeared.
Somewhere during the 'Next to Normal' Broadway run, I found myself learning more about myself onstage than in real life, and I truly realized the beautiful, tremendous, extraordinary gift that is performing.
Being a press secretary is like learning to type: You're hunting and pecking for a while and then you find yourself doing the touch system and don't realize it. You're speaking for the president without ever having to go to him.
I think kids slowly begin to realize that what they're learning relates to other things they know. Then learning starts to get more and more exciting.
You must realize that I was suffering from love and I knew him as intimately as I knew my own image in a mirror. In other words, I knew him only in relation to myself.
My first instinct was to cast as close to the short story as possible, but then I realized that I needed actors who could go for it and that they had to function well as a couple in a love story.
Whenever I realize I'm being a goofball, I write it down. When I release the joke onstage, I love watching the effect it has on the audience. No one wants to see someone talk who takes themselves too seriously.
Then a year would go by and I'd realize I love the acting too much and it is my identity and I don't know how to be anything but an actress. It's who and what I am, so I always come back.
I live in L.A. - I love L.A., first off - but I didn't realize how much better the air quality was in Vancouver until I went back to L.A. for a weekend and I literally felt like I was breathing fire.
