What's that line from TS Eliot? To arrive at the place where you started, but to know it for the first time. I'm able to write about a breakup from a different place. Same brokenness. Same rock-bottom. But a little more informed, now I'm older. Thank God for growing up.

Typically, I would run away from conflict and write about it - that was easier than staying and dealing face-to-face with humans; that's terrifying for me.

In the past, I had workaholic issues.

I think it's child abuse to have someone in the public eye too young. Society basically values wealth and fame and power at the cost of well-being. In the case of a child, it's at the cost of someone's natural development. It's already hard enough to develop.

Whiplash' was just a lucky kind of convergence of events in that I'd been trying to get a bigger project off the ground with no success for a while, and then finally, out of frustration, I just wrote this leaner, meaner, personal script about my experiences as a jazz drummer, and that's the one that wound up getting made.

I think that when I was in my 20s, I wanted to go after dramatic roles, and I didn't have a tremendous amount of success with that. I kind of backed my way into comedic parts. When you're young, you kind of take yourself seriously, and you think, like, 'People need to see what I can do.' And it's so laughable, especially with actors.

I will form good habits and become their slave. And how will I accomplish this difficult feat? Through these scrolls it will be done, for each scroll contains a principle which will drive a bad habit from my life and replace it with one which will bring me closer to success.

Don't aim for success if you want it; just do what you love and believe in, and it will come naturally.