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In Terms Of What Happened Over That Hiatus That I Took, I Just Rested. I Spent That Time With My Family, During Their Really Formative Years, And Enjoyed That, And I Messed With Pills And New Medications That Help Me To Deal With Dyskinesia And Some Other Things I Was Struggling With, That I Don't Have As Much Now Because Of Medication To Counter The Side Effects. So, It Just Seemed Like The Right Time To Do It.

-Michael J. Fox

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In Terms Of What

Michael J. Fox

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In Terms Of What Happened Over That Hiatus That I Took, I Just Rested. I Spent That Time With My Family, During Their Really Formative Years, And Enjoyed That, And I Messed With Pills And New Medications That Help Me To Deal With Dyskinesia And Some Other Things I Was Struggling With, That I Don't Have As Much Now Because Of Medication To Counter The Side Effects. So, It Just Seemed Like The Right Time To Do It.

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Medical Science Has Proven Time And Again That When The Resources Are Provided, Great Progress In The Treatment, Cure, And Prevention Of Disease Can Occur.

I Don't Look At Myself As A Leader. I Do Look At Myself As Part Of A Community.

Just As Parkinson's Isn't A Big Topic Of Conversation In My House, Neither Is My Career.

Turning Fully Toward The Glass, I Consider What I See. This Reflected Version Of Myself, Wet, Shaking, Rumpled, Pinched, And Slightly Stoop, Would Be Alarming Were It Not For The Self-satisfied Expression Pasted Across My Face. I Would Ask The Obvious Question, 'what Are You Smiling About?' But I Already Know The Answer: 'it Just Gets Better From Here.'

If I Don't Get Food In My Mouth, I'm Still Happy. If My Pants Are Round My Ankles, As Long As I Don't Get Arrested For Indecent Exposure, I'm Happy. I'm Worried About Keeping My Hair, Not How It's Combed.

[constant Curiousity Leads To Happiness:] I Wake Up Curious Every Day And Every Day I'm Surprised By Something. And If I Can Just Recognize That Surprise Every Day And Say, 'oh, That's A New Thing, That's A New Gift That I Got Today That I Didn't Even Know About Yesterday,' It Keeps Me Going. It Keeps Me More Than Going. It Keeps Me Enthusiastic And Grateful!

I Don't Want People To Kick My Ass, I Just Want To Get To A Point Where They Can't Kick It.

I Believe That The Majority Of Times The Scale Tilts Toward The Good. It's This Amazing Thing That Rolls On And If We Get In The Flow Of It, That's God. And If We Fight It, If We Swim The Other Way, We're Swimming Away From The Purest Expression Of This Life.

So I Never Spend A Lot Of Time Analyzing Why People Respond To My Work. But I Think That It's Just The Joy, A Passion For Life, That I Think Has Always Been In My Characters. Beyond That, I'm Just Grateful For It.

There's A Rule In Acting Called, 'don't Play The Result.' If You Have A Character Who's Going To End Up In A Certain Place, Don't Play That Until You Get There. Play Each Scene And Each Beat As It Comes. And That's What You Do In Life: You Don't Play The Result.

Pay Attention To What's Happening Around You. Read The Book Before You See The Movie. Remember, Though You, Alone, Are Responsible For Your Own Happiness, Its Still Okay To Feel Responsible For Someone Else's. Live And To Learn.

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.

I've Learned Some Exciting Things - Mostly, That People Really Want To Help Each Other; And That, If You Can Lay Out A Vision For Them - And That Vision Is Sincere And Genuine - They'll Get Interested.

Zoos Are Becoming Facsimiles - Or Perhaps Caricatures - Of How Animals Once Were In Their Natural Habitat. If The Right Policies Toward Nature Were Pursued, We Would Need No Zoos At All.

I Take The Medication For Myself So I Can Transact, Not For Anyone Else. But I Am Aware That It Is Empowering For People To See What I Do And, For The Most Part, People In The Parkinson's Community Are Just Really Happy That Parkinson's Is Getting Mentioned, And Not In A Pitying Way.

The Moment I Understood This - That My Parkinson's Was The One Thing I Wasn't Going To Change - I Started Looking At The Things I Could Change, Like The Way Research Is Funded.

I'm Kind Of Private And I Keep Things Inside A Lot, But It's Been So Wonderful To Realize That People Care About You In A Very Deep Way And That There Is Some Bond Between An Actor And His Audience. I Don't Even Know How To Describe That Feeling.

By 21, I Was Earning Six Figures A Week. By 23, I Had A Ferrari. It Was Nuts.

To Be Brutally Honest, For Much Of That Time, I Was The Only Person In The World With Parkinson's. Of Course, I Mean That In The Abstract. I Had Become Acutely Aware Of People Around Me Who Appears To Have The Symptoms Of Parkinson's Disease, But As Long As They Didn't Identify With Me, I Was In No Rush To Identify With Them. My Situation Allowed, If Not Complete Denial, At Least A Thick Padding Of Insulation.

[my Son] Will Have A Fairly Stable Future. Not One Where The Schoolyard Talk Is Whose Father Grossed $8 Million On His Last Picture.

Don't Spend A Lot Of Time Imagining The Worst-case Scenario. It Rarely Goes Down As You Imagine It Will, And If By Some Fluke It Does, You Will Have Lived It Twice.

Worst Case Scenario

The Only Thing Worse Than An Opportunity You Don't Deserve Is Blowing An Opportunity.

I Always Felt That I Came Up Short In The Education Department, But I've Come To The Conclusion That We All Get An Education.

'why Do You Think It Is...', I Asked Dr. Cook ... 'that Brain Surgery, Above All Else-even Rocket Science-gets Singled Out As The Most Challenging Of Human Feats, The One Demanding The Utmost Of Human Intelligence?' [dr. Cook Answered,] 'no Margin For Error.'

The More I Expect, The More Unhappy I Am Going To Be. The More I Accept, The More Serene I Am.

They Did Something Once That Slurred My Speech, And I Thought, "oh, Man, You're Messing With My Brain. It's Freaking Me Out."

I Urge You To Be Challenged And Inspired By What You Do Not Know.

I Don't Keep Up With It All. But Taylor Swift Writes Songs About Everybody She Goes Out With, Right? What A Way To Build A Career.

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The 'rescue Me' Gig Was A Unique Opportunity To Play A Character - A Misanthropic, Angry Guy - Who Was So Contrary To How People Think Of Me.

I Find As Long As I Acknowledge The Truth Of Something, Then That's It. I Know What It Is And Then I Can Operate. But If I Overestimate The Downside Of Something Or The Challenge Of Something And I Get Too Obsessed About The Difficulty Of It, Then I Don't Leave Enough Room To Be Open To The Upside, The Possibility.

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.

Look At The Choices You Have, Not The Choices That Have Been Taken Away From You. In Them, There Are Whole Worlds Of Strength And New Ways To Look At Things.

One's Dignity May Be Assaulted, Vandalized And Cruelly Mocked, But Cannot Be Taken Away Unless It Is Surrendered.

My View Of Life Is Colored By Humor And Looking At The Best In Any Situation.

My Tattoo Is That I Don't Have A Tattoo.

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Eighteen Years Old

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Vocabulary Words

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I Truly Believe That We Have Infinite Levels Of Power That We Don't Even Know Are Available To Us.

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If You Fixate On The Worst-case Scenario And It Actually Happens, You’ve Lived It Twice.

Worst Case Scenario

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If Spirituality Is That You're Humble In The Face Of Forces Greater Than You And You Believe Those Forces Are More Inclined Toward Being Good Than Being Bad, Then I'm A Spiritual Person.

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Since I'm Not Sure Of The Address To Which To Send My Gratitude, I Put It Out There In Everything I Do.

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I Don't Have Any Affirmations, I Don't Have Any Of That Stuff. My Natural State Is To Look At Things As Possibilities And As Opportunities.

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In Terms Of What Happened Over That Hiatus That I Took, I Just Rested. I Spent That Time With My Family, During Their Really Formative Years, And Enjoyed That, And I Messed With Pills And New Medications That Help Me To Deal With Dyskinesia And Some Other Things I Was Struggling With, That I Don't Have As Much Now Because Of Medication To Counter The Side Effects. So, It Just Seemed Like The Right Time To Do It.

I Have So Many Things That I Say To My Kids, I Just Drive Them Crazy.

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Do The Right Thing, And Then Do The Next Right Thing, And That Will Lead You To The Next Right Thing After That.

I Didn't Want O Do Metal Work And Get My Hands All Nicked Up And Be Around Guys. So I Took Drama Because There Were A Lot Of Girls.

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I Have No Argument With Those Who See In Organized Religion A Template Or An Imperative To Live Life According To A Prescribed Set Of Beliefs. Just Give Others The Room, Within The Laws Of Civil Society, To Believe Or Not Believe Whatever They Like.

Curiosity May Have Killed The Cat, But It Saved My Ass.

Pity Is A Benign Form Of Abuse.

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There's A Connection That's Hard To Explain. It's The Feeling I Get When I See Someone Shuffle Up To Meet Me, Or Say Something, And I Can Instantly Tell By The Cant Of Their Head Or By The Movement Of Their Arms -- And These Are People Who Aren't Even Full-blown Symptomatic -- That They're One Of Us. And The Look They Give Me, It's Not Just Gratitude -- I Don't Care About The Gratitude -- But Solidarity. And Shared Optimism. And A Resiliency That Just Makes Me Think We're Doing The Right Thing, And That This Truly Is A Community.

There Are Things I've Always Wanted To Do. Things I May Not Be Able To Do, But I Never Really Ruled Them Out - Like Running A Marathon. It's All A Matter Of Timing For Me. I Suppose I Could Probably Do It If I Planned It Out Right With Medication. I Don't Set A Whole Lot Of Goals. It Smacks A Little Bit Of Will To Me, And I Find That Will Is Not The Way To Go For Me.

Listening To People Espouse Beliefs Different From Mine Is Informative, Not Threatening, Because The Only Thing That Can Alter My Worldview Is A New And Undeniable Truth, And Contrary To What Jack Nicholson Says In 'a Few Good Men', "i Can Handle The Truth.

I Think We All Get Our Own Bag Of Hammers. We All Get Our Own Parkinson's. We All Have Our Own Thing. I Think That We'll Look At It Through The Filter Of That Experience, And We'll Say, "yeah, I Need To Laugh At My Stuff, Too."

When I Was Younger, I Was Always Described As Happy-go-lucky.

That's The Way I Look At Things - If You Focus On The Worst Case Scenario And It Happens, You've Lived It Twice. It Sounds Like Pollyanna-ish Tripe But I'm Telling You - It Works For Me.

Worst Case Scenario

If You Allow For The Possibilities Of Something Better, You Move Toward It Instinctively.

Something Better

Lance Armstrong Showed Up, And I Started Talking To Him; I Saw All These People With Cancer Who Followed Him To Paris For The Tour De France, And I Saw The Difference He Was Making In Their Lives. That Put It Together For Me...having It Be Not So Much About Me, But [my Being] A Vehicle For It.

When I Was 20, I Would Have Taken A Bullet In The Head To Never Have To Be 35.

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 Wouldn't Have Wanted To Miss The Opportunity To Make Those Three Films That Didn't Do Well. They Were Really Important To Me, And The Things I Learned Doing Them Were Important To Me.

I Wait For Good Opportunities To Come Up To Do Stuff; I'm Not Seeking Things. I'm Quite Busy In The Meantime, But If The Right Thing Came Up, I Would Be Happy To Do It.

My Age Makes Me Think How Valuable Life Is. How Bad Is Something Like Parkinson's In Relation To Not Having Life At All?

I Might Have Skipped Class, But I Didn't Miss Any Lessons.

I'm Also Very Proud To Be A Part Of A Trilogy Of Films That, If They Do Nothing Else, Allow People To Check Their Problems At The Door, Sit Down And Have A Good Time.

I Think There's A God And I Know It's Not Me. I Don't Have A Set Of Tenets, But I Live An Ethical Life.

I Still Play Hockey Every Now And Then, And I Still Golf. But My Biggest Exercise Is Walking My Big Dog In The Park Every Day.

I'm A Dad, I'm A Husband, I'm An Activist, I'm A Writer And I'm Just A Student Of The World.

I'm Glad I Don't Have A Drinking Problem,' I Confided, 'because I Don't Think I'd Ever Be Able To Quit.

I Have Now Is Whenever My Kids Say, "can You Look At This?" Or "can I Ask You Something?" Or "can You Come Here For A Minute?" No Matter What I Am Doing, I Say Yes Instead Of Saying, "just A Sec." They Never Abuse The Privilege, And I Never Once Regretted It. What They Took Me Away To Do Was Never Less Important Than What I Was Doing Already.

In Fact, Parkinson's Has Made Me A Better Person. A Better Husband, Father And Overall Human Being.

I Didn't Just Want To Be A Poster Boy And Sign On To Publicize Somebody Else's Method Of Operations. If I Was Going To Put Myself Out There, I Wanted To Make Sure That It Was To An End. So I Got Involved With This Congressional Hearing About Parkinson's Being Underfunded.

I Think I Benefited From Being Equal Parts Ambitious And Curious. And Of The Two, Curiosity Has Served Me Best.

I Don't Subscribe To Any Particular Doctrine Or Ideology. I Just Think That There's Kind Of A Good And Bad, The Good Being Life In Its Purest, Happiest Form, And The Other Being The Darker Side Of Existence.

Only A Few Of Us Will Admit It, But Actors Will Sometimes Read A Script Like This: Bullshit...bullshit...my Part...blah, Blah, Blah...my Part...bullshit.

The Thing That Brings People To Wail At A Wall, Or Face Mecca, Or To Go To Church, Is A Search For That Feeling Of Purity.

Everybody In The World Knew I Was Before I Knew Who I Was.

There's Something I Have About Being Canadian - There's A Distance It Gives You When You Live In The States And Operate In American Culture. You Approach Familiar Things A Different Way; You Come At It From A Different Angle. It's A Trait That Runs Through A Lot Canadian Artists' Work And Actors' Work And Musicians' - That Kind Of Special Remove.

If I Were Overweight Because I Ate Too Much, I Would Have Far More Of A Complex. I Would Know If I Just Stopped Eating And Showed A Little Discipline I Would Be Thin. But There's Not A Hell Of A Lot I Can Do About Being Short. You Just Gotta Run With It.

Certainly People Have A Lot Tougher Situations Than I've Had To Deal With. But I Will Say We Are All Dying From The Moment We Are Born. This Is Not Just Rehearsal.

I Can't Be Smug, Because I Know That You Can Lose Anything At Any Point. And I Can't Be Angry, Because I Haven't Lost It.

The Purpose That You Wish To Find In Life, Like A Cure You Seek, Is Not Going To Fall From The Sky. ...i Believe Purpose Is Something For Which One Is Responsible; It's Not Just Divinely Assigned.

My Wife Is Jewish, And Therefore, It's My Children's Birthright To Be Jewish.

The Biggest Gift On Father's Day Is If I Can Be With All My Kids.

Life Delivered Me A Catastrophe, But I Found A Richness Of Soul.

Richness Of Life

The Least Amount Of Judging We Can Do, The Better Off We Are.

Now I Feel And I Say All The Time That Vanity Is, Like, Long Gone. I'm Really Free Of Worrying About What I Look Like, Because It's Out Of My Shaky Hands. I Don't Control It. So Why Would I Waste One Second Of My Life Worrying About It?

I Like To Encourage People To Realize That Any Action Is A Good Action If It's Proactive And There Is Positive Intent Behind It.

So What I Say About Tracy Is This: Tracy's Big Challenge Is Not Having A Parkinson's Patient For A Husband. It's Having Me For A Husband. I Happen To Be A Parkinson's Patient.

I Don't Look At Life As A Battle Or As A Fight. I Don't Think I'm Scrappy. I'm Accepting.

After All That I'd Been Through, After All That I'd Learned And All That I'd Been Given, I Was Going To Do What I Had Been Doing Every Day For The Last Few Years Now: Just Show Up And Do Teh Best That I Could Do With Whatever Lay In Front Of Me.

Acceptance Is The Key To Everything.

I Am Careful Not To Confuse Excellence With Perfection. Excellence I Can Reach For; Perfection Is God's Business.

Inspirational Life

My Natural State Is One That's Affected By The Shortage Of Dopamine Production In My Brain. So My Natural State Is To Be Halting And At Times Tremulous And Kind Of Just Physically Disturbed. I Mean, That's My Natural State, Given The Situation In My Brain. But I'm Always As Happy Either Way. And So When It Comes To Me, Body Language Lies.

I Have Times When I'm Off-balance. I Have Times When I Slur My Words. I Have Times When I Walk Into Walls. I Have Times When I Can't Remember Somebody's Name.

You've Probably Read In People That I'm A Nice Guy - But When The Doctor First Told Me I Had Parkinson's, I Wanted To Kill Him.

It’s All About Control. Control Is Illusory. No Matter What University You Go To, No Matter What Degree You Hold, If Your Goal Is To Become Master Of Your Own Destiny, You Have More To Learn. Parkinson’s Is A Perfect Metaphor For Lack Of Control. Every Unwanted Movement In My Hand Or Arm, Every Twitch That I Cannot Anticipate Or Arrest, Is A Reminder That Even In The Domain Of My Own Being, I Am Not Calling The Shots. I Tried To Exert Control By Drinking Myself To A Place Of Indifference, Which Just Exacerbated The Sense Of Miserable Hopelessness.

If You Want To Be An Agent Of Change, It Starts With You And What You're Made Of.

When You're A Short Actor You Stand On Apple Boxes, You Walk On A Ramp. When You're A Short Star Everybody Else Walks In A Ditch.

The Oldest Form Of Theater Is The Dinner Table. It's Got Five Or Six People, New Show Every Night, Same Players. Good Ensemble; The People Have Worked Together A Lot.

If You Were To Rush Into This Room Right Now And Announce That You Had Struck A Deal - With God, Allah, Buddha, Christ, Krishna, Bill Gates, Whomever - In Which The Ten Years Since My Diagnosis Could Be Magically Taken Away, Traded In For Ten More Years As The Person I Was Before - I Would, Without A Moment's Hesitation, Tell You To Take A Hike.

A Creative Mess Is Better Than Idle Tidiness.

My Happiness Grows In Direct Proportion To My Acceptance, And In Inverse Proportion To My Expectations.

When Something Enters Your Life That Is So Big And So Non-negotiable As Catastrophic Illness, You Either Go In Denial For A While Or Ultimately You Accept It And You Make Space For It. And In Making Space For It, You Illuminate A Lot Of Things That You Normally Don't Have Room For You Simply Just Look At The World Differently.

Optimism Is A Cure For Many Things.

I Don't Think [parkinson's] Is Gothic Nastiness. There's Nothing On The Surface That's Horrible About Someone With A Shaky Hand. There's Nothing Horrible About Someone In Their Life Saying, "god, I'm Really Tired Of This Shaky Hand Thing" And Me Saying, "me, Too." That's Our Reality. We Have No Control Over It.

As For My Own Truncated Secondary Education, My Head Was In The Clouds As My Mom Would Say, Or If You Asked My Father, Up My Ass.

I Think There's A God And I Know It's Not Me.

But The Key To Our Marriage Is The Capacity To Give Each Other A Break. And To Realize That It's Not How Our Similarities Work Together; It's How Our Differences Work Together.

When Life Takes Away, Something Of Greater Value Is Always Given In Return.

You Suffer The Blow, But You Capitalize On The Opportunity Left In Its Wake.

I'm Not A Shill For The Democratic Party.

I Think The Scariest Person In The World Is The Person With No Sense Of Humor.

I Don't Set A Whole Lot Of Goals. It Smacks A Little Bit Of Will To Me, And I Find That Will Is Not The Way To Go For Me.

I Definitely Believe In A Higher Power.

Happiness Is A Decision.

The Laughs Mean More To Me Than The Adoration. If Two Girls Walk Up To Me And One Says 'you're Cute', I'll Say 'thank You', But I Appreciate It Much More When The Other One Says 'you Make Me Laugh So Much'.

Life Is The Power That's Greater Than I Can Ever Comprehend.

There's Always Failure. And There's Always Disappointment. And There's Always Loss. But The Secret Is Learning From The Loss, And Realizing That None Of Those Holes Are Vacuums.

I Have A Remarkably Normal Life.

By The Time I Entered High School, I Had Forsaken Academics Altogether In Favor Of My Burgeoning Acting Career.

Our Challenges Don’t Define Us, Our Actions Do.

Everything Is Cause And Effect. If You Don't Move, Nothing Will Move With You, And Nothing Will Move Toward You.

Cause And Effect

As With Any Turning Point Or Instance When A New Road Is Chosen And An Old One Forsaken, There Are Consequences.

You Know What's Cool? My Kids Think I'm Ordinary.

You Know You're Old When You Get A Lifetime Achievement Award. It's A Message You've Been Around Too Long.

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