To live your best life every day, because tomorrow isn’t promised.

But cancer has also ushered in new ways of being alive. Even when I am this distant from Canadian family and friends, everything feels as if it is painted in bright colors. In my vulnerability, I am seeing my world without the Instagrammed filter of breezy certainties and perfectible moments. I can’t help noticing the brittleness of the walls that keep most people fed, sheltered and whole. I find myself returning to the same thoughts again and again: Life is so beautiful. Life is so hard.

To do the very best you can and then let it go.

When something is half price in a supermarket, always find out why.

I was a ticket taker at the Universal Amphitheatre, an outdoor music venue. I saw everybody – Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt, Neil Young, the Eagles, Elton. But, after that, we had to clean the women’s restrooms and that was horrible. There was a lot of drinking, a lot of vomiting, a lot of very messy bathrooms.

I was doing a photoshoot right after an awards show and I was talking about someone whose makeup I really didn’t like. I said: “She’s gorgeous, I don’t understand how a makeup artist could encourage that?” And the makeup artist on the photoshoot said: “I did her makeup.”

Losing my memory. My mom had Alzheimer’s disease, and I never ever want to have that decline.

Having breast cancer.

I really admire Bonnie Raitt. She is a singer songwriter who has been doing what she has been doing for so many years and she recently won the song of the year Grammy for Just Like That. I loved the validation that creativity never stops, you can keep doing the things that you love.

I was opening in a play in my 20s, and my agent came on opening night, brought flowers, took me out to dinner and then told me she was no longer going to be representing me.