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Money can't buy you happiness, but it can buy you a yacht big enough to pull up right alongside it.
I don't have to take a trip around the world or be on a yacht in the Mediterranean to have happiness. I can find it in the little things, like looking out into my backyard and seeing deer in the fields.
I haven't bought a yacht or an island or even a palm tree.
I never had the high-paying job or the company car. It took me over a decade to pay off my student loans. I never had to worry about where to dock my yacht to reduce my taxes.
My first job was in sixth grade, sweeping the clay tennis courts at the yacht club near my house, which I was not a member of. Always had to pay my own rent. But I don't really have any concept of how money works. I don't know how much things cost. Like a BMW. Or a quart of milk. It's embarrassing.
I am not a yachting person, by nature, but I have just enough experience on the sea under sail to feel a certain nostalgia for it when I see a big white racing yacht heeled over at cruising speed on the ocean, and I can still tie a mean bowline knot on just about anything in less than 10 seconds.
After the success of 'August,' there were people saying I should change my life. And maybe I should have bought a yacht and traveled the world instead of returning to Steppenwolf to act in and write plays. But I'm from the Midwest, and that's what we do: We go back to work.
In New York, FEMA granted the Mamaroneck Beach & Yacht Club's request to be remapped from the high-risk flood zone in August 2012 - just two months before the club was damaged and its outbuildings destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, which stacked up yachts at its docks like pick-up sticks.
I haven't isolated myself. I am not living on a yacht somewhere. I am not tucked away or behind a gate somewhere. I am not flying on a private plane. I am going to the airport, I am with people, some of the interactions are good, some of them are not so good, but it keeps me in touch with being, you know, part of society.
I still live in an apartment in Paris with my wife. No, we don't have a yacht, but we do have a house in Spain; that is my luxury.