But with voice-over on a reality TV show, I think I'm pretty up there, maybe one of the best. It's a confidence boost, which helps my stand-up because I'll try more interesting stuff.

Being the number one seed, you're thinking you don't want to lose in the second round.

I'd rather go down with an almighty bang than play it safe.

Energy begets energy.

It's important to believe in yourself because if you don't believe in yourself, then no one else can believe in you.

Success isn't anything to do with being lucky. It's knowing what you want, taking the necessary action, and believing you can achieve anything you set your mind to.

Writer's block results from too much head. Cut off your head. Pegasus, poetry, was born of Medusa when her head was cut off. You have to be reckless when writing. Be as crazy as your conscience allows.

The hero whose attachment to ego is already annihilate passes back and forth across the horizons of the world, in and out of the dragon, as readily as a king through all the rooms of his house. And therein lies his power to save; for his passing and returning demonstrate that through all the contraries of phenomenality the Un-create- Imperishable remains, and there is nothing to fear (93).

Nirvana is right here, in the midst of the turmoil of life. It is the state you find when you are no longer driven to live by compelling desires, fears, and social commitments, when you have found your center of freedom and can act by choice out of that. Voluntary action out of this center is the action of the bodhisattvas -- joyful participation in the sorrows of the world. You are not grabbed, because you have released yourself from the grabbers of fear, lust, and duties.

The very cave you are afraid to enter turns out to be the source of what you are looking for.

The passage to fulfillment lies between the perils of desire and fear.

What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, in the fulfillment or the fiasco. There's always the possibility of a fiasco. But there's also the possibility of bliss.