I'm lucky to be alive. I'm one of only 40 people who have survived the surgery I had, and when you've been that close to dying, you re-evaluate what's really important to you - and it's nothing to do with fame and money.
While I'm leader, nothing will be off limits - there will not be one policy, one rule, one way of working which cannot be changed.
Being 36 years old changes you a lot, and so does eight years away from career, fame, needing attention, needing to be loved by strangers on some level. I was loving anonymity. I was loving the fact that I could meet a girl who didn't know who I was. I enjoyed it very much, I have to say.
I need to get hit in the face. I need to get dropped hard before I can really circle the wagons and proceed. It breaks you out of being complacent, of being in your comfort zone.
I'm like a decathlete who does all of the events he's used to, but is being forced by certain circumstances to focus on three events, and being forced to focus on events that he wasn't that interested in, and also weren't his strongest events.
I played competitive golf all my life. Then all of a sudden, when I quit playing the game, I've got all this spare time and this energy. And certainly I wasn't ready to pack up my bags and go sit in front of the television with a shawl on.
I have all this time between projects, and I'm not so sure that's a healthy thing. It's scary, because at 36 I'm woefully unqualified for anything else.
It is not only by the questions we have answered that progress may be measured, but also by those we are still asking. The passionate controversies of one era are viewed as sterile preoccupations by another, for knowledge alters what we seek as well as what we find.
As young people we want something to slow us down and keep us trapped in one place long enough to look below the surface of the world. That disaster is a car crash or a war. To make us sit still. It can be getting cancer or getting pregnant. The important part is how it seems to catch us by surprise. That disaster stops us from living the life we'd planned as children - a life of constant dashing around.
If, then, I were asked for the most important advice I could give, that which I considered to be the most useful to the men of our century, I should simply say: in the name of God, stop a moment, cease your work, look around you.
People often think that losing your job is one of the worst things that can happen to someone. And, in some cases, that might be true. But for me, unemployment can be the time and the motivation to finally go after my goals.
I've done what I've always wanted to do. But as one Senator said, just because you're doing what you've always wanted to do, it doesn't mean you have to do it forever. And it's very taxing in terms of the travel, the running around.
Pretty much every weekend, my wife and I have the shall-we-live-in-the-country conversation. I suppose it's something to do with getting older and feeling I want to shed some of the things I've been doing for the last 20 years and go back to my roots.
Give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime. Teach a man to cycle and he will realize fishing is stupid and boring.
I never felt I was missing anything ever until one day I stopped long enough to smell the roses outside of this little treadmill I'd gotten myself onto and I realised there were other things that I like that I didn't know. I realised I didn't like certain things in my life that I then got rid of and it just opened the door to a plethora of other things that entered.
I would rather not have upset him, but I couldn't see any reason to change my life. Looking back on it, I wasn't unhappy. When I was a student, I had lots of ambitions like that. But when I had to give up my studies I learned very quickly that none of it really mattered.
I'm not the entertainer anymore.
Busy is good, isn't it? Busy means we're hard at it, achieving our ends or "goals." Haven't had time to stop, or look around or think. That's considered the sign of a life well lived ... Suppose, though, you're not sure that what you're doing is at all worthwhile. Suppose you blundered into it over a spoonful of lime pickle. It's easy, it pays quite well. But really it's a distraction. It stops you thinking about what you ought to be doing.
There are periods where you think, "What am I doing?" or "What am I doing it for?"; that's a more scary question. "I've made s---loads of money, I've left my mark in music, why am I still doing this?," and it takes a while to answer that question.
In all my years of counselling those near death, I've yet to hear anyone say they wish they had spent more time at the office
Having our fundamental assumptions about life challenged is never a comfortable thing.
I left acting for 15 years, and I think it's really nice to have another life. I took too much for granted when I was younger. I didn't really want to be an actor. I didn't really love it. And so I made a lot of mistakes. Oddly, I care much more about it now. I feel like a complete novice.
I think I started to approach time in a different way after the accident. Before I was more willing to give my time to people and things that I wasn't as interested in because somehow I allowed myself to be brainwashed into being forced to work with other people or on other projects that I had no interest in. So simply, the accident gave me the opportunity to do what I really wanted to do.
I believe much of the pain of a breakup comes from having a life plan that you have fallen in love with. When it does not work out, you become angry that you now have to pursue a new life plan.
Don't allow old traditions to become permanent mental scripts for managing your life in the present. Reason: you will not be able to transform yourself to think differently and be better as you grow with age and maturity.
