I was lucky enough to win the Davis Cup in my first year in 1999. I won my first slam at the U.S. Open in 2001 and became world No. 1 later that year. By the age of 20, I'd done it all.
Prince, you never knew what to expect from him from one album to the next. Miles Davis was like that. You know, once you get used to one style, boom, he switched it and, you know, switched gears on you. So those artists are very exciting to me, very exciting to follow their path, you know, and their journey.
And it was where I learned how to play tennis and eventually became captain of the tennis team at the school and was on the Junior Davis Cup in New York City.
And I remember looking at Gray Davis and, you know, Gray is the consummate political operative.
I had teammates like Chris Davis. Manny Machado was really young and such a good kid. Seeing his development, it's ridiculous. He's going to get bigger. He's going to get stronger. He's going to get even better.
I'm on Governor Gray Davis' California Alliance Towards Education to bring the arts back to high schools.
I didn't grow up during the time that Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis and all those people were playing. So it's not really my responsibility to keep it up, what they were doing.
I think it comes from really liking literary forms. Poetry is very beautiful, but the space on the page can be as affecting as where the text is. Like when Miles Davis doesn't play, it has a poignancy to it.
Coltrane was moving out of jazz into something else. And certainly Miles Davis was doing the same thing.
I don't think I have the image that say, Judy Garland has, or Bette Davis.
See, we started out with a foundation of blues. But then we added people like Miles Davis and John Coltrane to the mix and gave rock n' roll a much more complex structure. It made it possible to play more than three chords.
I want to establish myself as the first Eric Davis, not the next Willie Mays.
Back in the days of Barbara Stanwyck and Bette Davis, beauty wasn't the be-all and end-all it is today.
All I really want to do is just keep acting, and some of it will stink, and some of it will be really good, and maybe when I'm 85 and presenting an Oscar like Bette Davis did, I can look back and say, 'It was okay, I did all right.'
When I have to compete with John Coltrane and Miles Davis and Louie Armstrong on iTunes, which I'm doing now, that's a problem. That means that jazz is not being heard by younger audiences.
I wanted to go to the underdog team - I wanted to build something somewhere like a lot of the other guys who stayed home at Maryland, like Vernon Davis and players like that. I wanted to stay home and do it in front of my family and my friends... Those thing matter to me.
Here's the mark that a lot of people miss nowadays. Producers missed. They leave out the heart and soul. And that's what I learned from Sammy Davis, Jr., from Frank Sinatra, is when you went to go see those shows, you got to know them.
I learn the techniques and then take what I need. I have the Essie Davis technique of acting. I'm an instinctive actress.
Over time, I've loved jazz, Miles Davis and Chet Baker, then Janis and Jimi and Creedence, then classic rock.
My favourite performances are by actresses like Bette Davis in 'All About Eve' or Gena Rowlands in pretty much anything - performances that have nothing to do with age.
I haven't been afraid of John Coltrane or Miles Davis or Bill Evans or Wayne Shorter or Herbie Hancock. Why would I be afraid of the Beatles?
Guys like Alvin Adams, Sweet D Walter Davis, Larry Nance, and Kyle Macy became my basketball heroes.
Now is a good time, 10 years ago would have been a good time, and 10 years from now it will still be a good time to see a dynamic, entertaining movie that's wall-to-wall Miles Davis where the music will hopefully spark some desire to know more about the man.
I wanted the opportunity to work with Judy Davis and Simon Wincer.
Beauty is subjective: Bette Davis wasn't beautiful, but she was more than beautiful.
Music is my only guide. I don't care if people pigeonhole me. Miles Davis is my hero. He covered Cindy Lauper and Michael Jackson, and he didn't give a hoot about what the purists said.
I started off in drama, and there are so many women that I admire. Women in this industry are gladiators. Cicely Tyson, Viola Davis, Taraji Henson, Regina Hall, Regina King.
I always loved the bad girls in the movies. I loved Bette Davis; I loved Katherine Hepburn. I loved Ava Gardner.
I love nineties stuff like Alice in Chains and Nine Inch Nails. It'd be my dream to have a Radiohead-themed episode of 'Glee.' I also love jazz greats like Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Herbie Hancock.
I had a Stuart Davis poster growing up.
If Miles Davis hadn't died it would have been interesting to do an album with him, but there wasn't much else that would have got me into the studio... although Herbie Hancock has just been in touch about doing something and that would be an interesting combination.
Billy Barnes signed me and got me my first role in an interracial love story filmed in Atlanta called 'Together For Days' with Clifton Davis. My mother thinks it was my best work. You cannot find a copy of it.
Bette Davis was a close friend. She loved to have a good time.
I was appointed by Governor Gray Davis to the Los Angeles Superior Court and by President Obama to the district court and then the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. In securing the state court appointment, I think it really helped that I had some trial experience.
I wanted to do what I was seeing Dorothy Dandridge doing, what I saw Marilyn Monroe do, what I saw Bette Davis do. I wanted to do that: to tell stories. I wanted to make people laugh, make people cry. I wanted to be a storyteller.
Reading a Lydia Davis story collection is like reaching into what you think is a bag of potato chips and pulling out something else entirely: a gherkin, a pepper corn, a truffle, a piece of beef jerky.
