You know, once you have been through a certain amount of things in life, you definitely grow more comfortable with yourself.

It's vital to understand where you may have gaps in your knowledge or experience and to surround yourself with a team that complements that.

Self-love has very little to do with how you feel about your outer self. It's about accepting all of yourself.

It's important to believe in yourself and the beauty of your dreams and to not let anyone tell you different.

I've learned that it's not a straight road to the top, and there are going to be setbacks along the way. You have to be patient, and you have to keep believing in what you're doing. And keep believing in yourself, no matter what is happening. And then eventually you'll get there.

Encourage your kids to be creative. When you see them tracing a character from TV or a comic, say something like, 'That's nice. Now how about you create a character yourself?' Keep kids curious and excited about creating.

Teaching is like flying a plane. You leave school one day feeling like you're spiraling down toward the trees, expecting that the next day the crash will come. You brace yourself for the impact, only to find that things have leveled out at treetop height, and you climb and enjoy the remainder of the flight.

With films, you completely immerse yourself in a character, get into who they are, live it and then release it.

Sometimes as an actor, it's really hard to give yourself permission to take your time and move slowly and not feel like you're holding people up or you should be going faster.

You can't think about things you want to change. Just be yourself.

If you want to evolve and reinvent yourself, you will need to observe people and explore a lot.

Learn from my mistakes and you don't have to make them yourself.

You have to be the one promoting yourself. If you don't think that you're worthy, you're never going to make it.

Often when you are starting out in comedy, you will find that people will laugh at the things you didn't think were funny. It's important to pay attention also to what people are laughing at when you are just talking in regular conversation. Often that is when you are truly being yourself.

Life-writing calls for any number of dubious gifts: A touch of O.C.D., a lack of imagination, a large desk, neutrality of Swiss proportions, tactlessness, a high tolerance for archival dust. Most of all it calls for an act of displacement. 'To find your subject, you must in some sense lose yourself along the way,' is Richard Holmes's version.

You've got to believe in yourself that you will get the runs for your team.

Anytime you fall short with someone you've been with the whole time, you always ask yourself or ask the other partner, 'Can we do this?'

Being able to express yourself under the name Erika Jayne and saying things people want to say but wouldn't, or doing things that people want to do but don't, or taking that extra leap of faith or pushing the levels of sexuality, or whatever, that helps Erika Girardi stand on her own two feet and be calm and peaceful.

Everything that we know in the business we've had to learn from mistakes. No one sat us down and taught us or even said, 'Go pick up this book and learn for yourself.' We trusted people.

Stop allowing yourself to focus on depressing life circumstances - including focusing on being depressed about your weight. All this negative focus will only lead you to feeling bummed and wanting to pig out. Instead, consciously focus on happy life circumstances you enjoy doing, and create more of them!