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I'm like a phoenix. I rise from the ashes.

I think I want to talk about life from the point of view of death.

My younger sister Debby had died of cancer, which started me writing - the sense of life being short. Cancer focuses your mind.

The one term I don't like to be called is a 'vulture.' Because to me, a vulture is a kind of asset-stripper that eats dead flesh off the bones of a dead creature. Our bird should be the phoenix, the bird that reinvents itself, recreates itself from its ashes. And that's much closer to what it is that we really do.

I am just another fireman because the story focuses on Joaquin Phoenix's character, but I play Joaquin's close friend and I get burned up a little bit, but I don't die.

When I'm writing about reality, I'm writing about death. When I'm writing fiction, I'm writing about life.

Sometimes I wonder if suicides aren't in fact sad guardians of the meaning of life.

It's best to have failure happen early in life. It wakes up the Phoenix bird in you so you rise from the ashes.

I get weary of reading about rebirths because we're all growing all the time and it diminishes the life you've lived if you say 'I'm a new person.'

You know Americans are obsessed with life and death and rebirth, that's the American Cycle. You know, awakening, tragic, horrible death and then Phoenix rising from the ashes. That's the American story, again and again.