Yes, there will be challenges, and things will blow up in your face, but learning experiences are different from wasting your life pushing a boulder up a hill.

If you're confident, then you don't feel weird about showing your vulnerability and opening yourself up to learning from somebody else. Insecure people stay where they are because they're afraid of admitting their weaknesses.

All living things come hardwired with certain traits and characteristics that are part of our nature, meaning that these things come naturally to us: they're what we're meant to do, and they're how universal intelligence flows though us best. Birds gotta fly, fish gotta swim, etc.

See failures as learning experiences, not character faults.

I checked myself out in that funeral parlour scene. I saw myself laughing, because there was a shot of Ed and I together and Mary was right in back of us. My head turned from the camera and I saw myself laughing, because Mary was absolutely brilliant in that thing.

Short stories consume you faster. They're connected to brevity. With the short story, you are up against mortality. I know how tough they are as a form, but they're also a total joy.

When you look at death, it makes you understand the importance of the moment when you have life and death in front of you, and you witness seeing someone deteriorating in front of you - it's an overwhelming experience. If you don't learn from that, I don't know what else you're gonna learn.

I came to N.Y.C. in 1988 and got very involved with Act Up. I also started making movies, including two very gay shorts, 'Vaudeville' and 'Lady.' It was the height of the AIDS epidemic, and New York City was both dying and very alive at the same time.