Vanity's really overrated. When I was 20, teenage girls had my picture on the wall... I don't need to be pretty anymore. I just am who I am.

I had all the usual ambition growing up. I wanted to be a writer, a musician, a hockey player. I wanted to do something that wasn't nine to five. Acting was the first thing I tried that clicked.

No, I got a GED in my 30s. My kids know that I never stop learning, and they know I love reading. I have books overflowing everywhere. I am current on today's events and I read the paper every day, and we talk about it, so they see that appetite.

Acceptance doesn't mean resignation; it means understanding that something is what it is and that there's got to be a way through it.

I grew up in a secular suburban Jewish household where we only observed the religion on very specific times like a funeral or a Bar Mitzvah.

Mortality is very different when you're 20 to when you're 50.

I came face to face with death at thirteen years old.

From the moment my dad died, from the moment I found out there was the possibility of his dying, there were many surprises - years after, minutes after. The moments I was okay were as surprising as the ones that I wasn't. Making it through the eulogy without losing it. And then the guilt I felt about it. Surprise!