I actually went to NYU for six months, had some family issues that kind of set me back, and I couldn't afford to go anymore. That was the theme going on in my whole life, you know: money stopping me from whatever I wanted to do.
People are always ruining things for you.
In your life there's peaks and valleys and sometimes we regress, and we don't even know we regress. You just have to learn how to accept all of your mistakes and learn to love yourself again.
No human being is immune to adversity or personal setbacks.
My professional life, in a strange way, has always been going up, up, up, while my personal life was just the complete opposite.
Have you ever sabotaged yourself? Ever come close to victory only to slide back into the jaws of defeat? When you are fighting yourself, you can't win.
Just like my career, I've sung the same songs night after night in so many ways. It's always different because every space is different. I lost my mojo once. It was like Austin Powers. I don't know why or how, but I had to get it back. And I did.
I failed my exams and my driving test. I failed to get into the Foreign Office and drama school. The big F was dominant in my early years.
The major problem of life is learning how to handle the costly interruptions. The door that slams shut, the plan that got sidetracked, the marriage that failed. Or that lovely poem that didn't get written because someone knocked on the door.
There's tons of creative people in television that have one failure after another, and they just step up higher. I could never get over that. When I had a failure, there was no such thing as just getting over it.
Everybody needs a fan, and the support and the encouragement. We're human beings; that is an essential part of the equation. When that fan is not there and when you're in a situation that triggers you on a historical level, you behave impulsively. You can destroy years worth of work professionally, personally, in a moment of being triggered by that.
There is really no end to life's little humiliations.
Well, I like to think that my illness has prevented me from rising to any number of dizzy heights.
Once you get to your forties or fifties in this society, very few people haven't had at least one body blow - financial, bankruptcy, divorce, relationship disaster, addiction, trouble with a child, trouble with a parent. Most people take some blow.
