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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.

-Michael J. Fox

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My Natural State Is

Michael J. Fox

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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.

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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.

After A Year Or So I Really Thought I Was Howard Hughes. Here I Was At Eighteen Years Old, Getting All These Checks.

Eighteen Years Old

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

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

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.

The Way I Look At Life, And The Way I Look At The Reality Of Parkinson's, Is That Sometimes It's Frustrating And Sometimes It's Funny. I Need To Look At It That Way, And I Think Other People Will Look At It That Way.

I Remember My Son Wanted To Go To Bed With His Cowboy Boots On, And We Had This Fight For Like An Hour. Then I Realized That The Only Good Reason I Had For Him Not To Do It Is Because I Didn't Want Him To. There Was Really No Other Reason. And Finally I Said, "ok, Fine." It Was A Great Victory For Me, Because I Realized It Doesn't Really Matter.

Optimism Is A Cure For Many Things.

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.

Pity Is A Benign Form Of Abuse.

I Have A Remarkably Normal Life.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Whatever The Situation, Just Take It For What It Is. You Don't Have To Make It Worse Or Better Than It Is. It Just Is What It Is. Always Deal With The Honesty, The Truth Of What Something Is, And Then You've Got All Kinds Of Choices.

I See Possibilities In Everything. For Everything That's Taken Away, Something Of Greater Value Has Been Given.

[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!

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.

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

Inspirational Life

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.

Life Is What You Put Into It And How Much You Take Out Of It. You Put In More Than Is Expected, And You Take Out Less Than You Want.

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

I Mean, I Enjoy My Work As An Actor. But To Make A Difference In People's Lives Through Advocacy And Through Supporting Research - That's The Kind Of Privilege That Few People Will Get, And It's Certainly Bigger Than Being On Tv Every Thursday For Half An Hour.

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.

I've Never Gotten Up To See Something One Of My Kids Wanted To Show Me And Not Been Rewarded.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

When I Started It [non For Profit], I Thought, I'm Not Smart Enough To Do This. I Had No Experience In Management, No Experience In Administration, No Experience In Nonprofit; But Then This Phrase Came Into My Head: I Only Have To Be Smart Enough To Find People Who Are Smarter Than Me; I Only Have To Be Smart Enough To Recognize Who Knows More Than Me.

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.

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.

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.

As Much As Parkinson's Is About Movement, The End Stage Is Being Frozen. So The More I Let That Happen, The More I'm Gonna Be Stuck Within That And Unable To Reverse It.

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

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

It Is Ironic That In The Same Year We Celebrate The 50th Anniversary Of The Discovery Of Dna, Some Would Have Us Ban Certain Forms Of Dna Medical Research. Restricting Medical Research Has Very Real Human Consequences, Measured In Loss Of Life And Tremendous Suffering For Patients And Their Families.

I Don't Burden Myself Too Much With Others' Expectations - Or Even My Own Expectations. I Think Your Happiness Grows In Direct Proportion To Your Acceptance, And In Inverse Proportion To Your Expectations. It's Just A Matter Of Putting One Foot In Front Of The Other - Or Doing The Next Right Thing, So To Speak.

Humility Is Always A Good Thing. It's Always A Good Thing To Be Humbled By Circumstances So You Can Then Come From A Sincere Place To Try To Deal With Them.

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

Richness Of Life

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

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

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 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.

Life Is The Power That's Greater Than I Can Ever Comprehend. The Way Life Runs Through Everything, Even The Tiniest Elements Of Nature - That Makes Me Humble.

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.

I Worked Very Hard On Those Movies But There Was Some Creative Connection That Wasn't Being Made.

My Experience Is To Deal With Things Through Humor.

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

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 Not A Shill For The Democratic Party.

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

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'.

You Know What I Want? The Answer Is, I Truly Don't Know What I Want. I Don't Want To Do A Television Series. I Want To Do Dramas As Well As Comedies, But I Have No Idea What Kind Or In What Order. Just Give Me The Chance At Them.

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

I Got Sick Of Turning On The Tv And Seeing My Face.

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.

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.

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

When I Was Younger, I Was Always Described As Happy-go-lucky. Then I Drank And I Partied - Did All That Stuff That Might Tell You Maybe There Was A Little Bit Of Untruth In That [description]. Now, The Surprising Thing Is That When I Say Stuff, I Actually Mean It. I Don't Have To Do The Work Of Trying To Formulate My Point Of View. It Just Is. And It's Surprising How Much I Love Life. I Just Really Have A Good Time.

Disease Is A Non-partisan Problems That Requires A Non-partisan Solution.

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.

I Love The Irony. I'm Perceived As Being Really Young And Yet I Have The Clinical Condition Of An Old Man.

My Notion Of Spirituality Was Different Than It Is Now, But Even If I'd Been The Most Fundamentalist Of Believers, I Would Have Assumed That God Had Better Things To Do Than Arbitrarily Smite Me With Shaking Palsy.

Ironic That In Order To Do My Life's Work, I Had To Quit My Day Job.

Acceptance Is The Key To Everything.

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

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

I Can Get Sad, I Can Get Frustrated, I Can Get Scared, But I Never Get Depressed - Because There's Joy In My Life.

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 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."

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.

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.

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 Always Feel Very Connected To Canada. My Reference For Everything Is My Canadian Background, My Life In Canada. Particularly On This Issue Of Refugee Immigration: I Couldn't Be Prouder Of Canada.

There Are No Moments You Have Frozen In Amber. It's Moving, It's Changing, So Appreciate What's Good About Right Now And Be Ready For What's Next.

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.

My Whole Life, Meeting People Is Like A Blind Date, Because I Feel Like They've Already Seen The Video On Me.

I Can Say, "i Don't Have Anything I Regret!" But I Can Also Say, "i Can Go Forward In My Life The Way It Is And I Don't Think I'll Accrue Any Future Regrets."

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

Something Better

He Gave Life To The Breath- Oxygen, A Simple Gas, He Transferred Into Words, Ideas, Hope.

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.

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

With Parkinson's, It's Like You're In The Middle Of The Street And You're Stuck There In Cement Shoes And You Know A Bus Is Coming At You, But You Don't Know When. You Think You Can Hear It Rumbling, But You Have A Lot Of Time To Think. And So You Just Don't Live That Moment Of The Bus Hitting You Until It Happens. There's All Kinds Of Room In That Space.

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.

Pain Is Temporary, Film Is Forever.

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

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

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.

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

I Definitely Believe In A Higher Power.

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

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

Cause And Effect

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Worst Case Scenario

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

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.

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

No Matter How Much Fame You Have, It's Not Something That Belongs To You. If I'm Famous, That Doesn't Belong To Me-that Belongs To You. If You Can't Remember Who I Am, I'm No Longer Famous.

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.

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

In My 50s I'll Be Dancing At My Children's Weddings.

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

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.

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

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 Saw A Birthday Card The Other Day, And It Said, "if You Didn't Know How Old You Were, How Old Would You Think You Were?" I Started Changing It In My Mind Right Away To, "if You Didn't Know How Sick You Were, How Sick Would You Think You Were?"

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

A Creative Mess Is Better Than Idle Tidiness.

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.

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

The Secret To A Good Marriage, As Far As I Am Concerned, Is A Joke I Make: Keep The Fights Clean And The Sex Dirty.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I Don't Feel A Yearning Or A Sense Of Missed Opportunities. I Don't Have Many Regrets. So That's A Nice Feeling. To Have No Regrets And Still Have Enough Sense Of Adventure To Take On Risk.

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.

If You Have One Foot In Yesterday And One Foot In Tomorrow, You're Pissing All Over Today.

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.'

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

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.

A Lot Of Times, When You Have A Disability, One Of The Things You Deal With Is Other People's Projections Of What Your Experience Is And Their Fear About It, And Not Seeing The Experience You're Having. There's Nothing Horrifying About It To Me. It Is What I Deal With. It Is My Reality And My Life, But It's Not Horrible.

If You Have Doubts About Someone, Lay On A Couple Of Jokes. If He Doesn't Find Anything Funny, Your Radar Should Be Screaming. Then I Would Say Be Patient With People Who Are Negative, Because They're Really Having A Hard Time.

Life Is Good, And There's No Reason To Think It Won't Be--right Up Until The Moment When Everything Explodes Into A Fireball Of Tiny, Unrecognizable Fragments, Or It All Goes Skidding Sideways, Through The Guardrail, Over The Embankment, And Down The Mountain. This Will Happen (and Probably More Than Once).

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.

Happiness Is A Decision.

Family Is Not An Important Thing. It's Everything.

Vocabulary Words

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.

Control Is Illusory. No Matter What University You Go To, No Matter What Degree You Hold, If Your Goal Is To Becomes Master Of Your Own Destiny, You Have More To Learn.

Almost Instantly [after My Announcement Of Parkinson's], I Saw The First Couple Of Days The Coverage Was About, You Know, "fox's Parkinson's, Blah, Blah, Blah." Then, Two Days After That, I Saw The Coverage Turn. It Started To Become, "can Young People Get Parkinson's?" All Of A Sudden, The Conversation Turned To Become About That. And That Was One Of The First Eye-opening Things.

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

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

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.

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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