In this business, if you take too long, the landscape changes. So the opportunities that were there when I decided to take a break weren't there when I came back. It's like, 'Wait a second - what happened here?' It was a real learning experience. I've paid my dues, I will tell you that.

The only time it got really crazy was during 'Batman.' Anywhere I went in the world, people knew who I was. I was being offered these huge films that would have taken my career to a different level, and I decided to put on the brakes. I knew if I continued on that track, I probably wouldn't have gotten married.

There are obviously peaks and valleys in everyone's career. This business can be a roller-coaster ride, and it's really hard to stay on top all the time. Very few people do.

I'm definitely the most tech-savvy in my family. My wife wouldn't have a clue, as far as getting the computer working. All of my kids, it's amazing. Like everybody's kids, they're more savvy than I am, probably.

After I came out to my mother at 17, I ran away from home and lived with a friend. We come from a highly religious family, and she could not accept it. It was devastating, and I was depressed.

The male role models I had all seemed to have been in the military. My father served in the army. My uncle was in the Marine Corps. Both of my grandfathers served in WWII. There weren't any career soldiers in my family, but when I was young it seemed like a way of arriving at adulthood.

I'm the lucky father to two young men. When any of your kids, and your parents feel this way about you, clearly, when your kids find what they love to do and they throw themselves into it, and they find joy in the doing of it, and it's actually work that's honorable, and, you know, all of those things, it's a great feeling.

The spark for 'In Praise of Slowness' came when I began reading to my children. Every parent knows that kids like their bedtime stories read at a gentle, meandering pace. But I used to be too fast to slow down with the Brothers Grimm. I would zoom through the classic fairy tales, skipping lines, paragraphs, whole pages.