I wish somebody had given me the news that ideas don't just fall on your head like fairy dust. You have to treat that like a job. You have to spend hours each day, where you're just like, 'This is the part of the day when I'm looking for an idea.'
If anybody had a reason to become a delinquent, to become a criminal, to be angry at the man, to be angry at the white man, to be angry at America, it's my dad, but he did not feel that way at all.
When I heard that 'Roots' was being remade, my first response was, 'Seriously?' I was a bit skeptical. Then I had an audition in early 2015. I didn't know how to feel about it. I was a little scared of the responsibility of telling the story again with the weight of the first one behind me - I was scared of comparisons.
The poverty one still sees in America today is more shocking to me than anything I have seen in Ethiopia or Calcutta or Manila, and has made me, as someone living in a society of great wealth and someone who's never had to worry about the next meal, think seriously about what universal responsibility really means.
My husband is exceedingly busy. For some time the talk of his going had been slack, but just now again there seems to be a move to get him sent to the front!
Would you rather your child had feminism or cancer?
Obviously a primary liberal conviction is that we should be tolerant of other peoples' convictions. But if we believe in something, we had better find ways to say so convincingly.
I probably have more friends from 'Twilight' than I've ever had in my whole life.
I've had an absolutely charmed life in every aspect of it. I do for my job what I would do for a hobby if it wasn't my job. Half the secret of happiness, I'm ecstatically happily married with three great kids, you know. It's been a blessed life.
I've been in the service industry. I've bar-tended. I've waited tables, and I've worked at pizza places; I've made pizza. I've had a lot of jobs, and many of them were in the food service industry.
I think the 'Boxers' book was easier for me to envision as a comic, because they were on this epic journey. These teenagers basically gathered into this army and marched to the capital city where they had a showdown with the Europeans and Japanese. On the 'Saints' side, it was a lot trickier.
When I was about 4, my mum had a lime-green Versace jacket with massive shoulder pads, and I remember thinking, 'Why does her head look so small? Why is she doing that to herself?' But she loved it!
My mom had been a script supervisor in Hungary, but you can't just jump into that in Canada without knowing any English. She worked retail jobs and raised my sister and me while learning English.
People ask me if I ever thought of writing a children's book. I say, 'If I had a serious brain injury I might well write a children's book', but otherwise the idea of being conscious of who you're directing the story to is anathema to me, because, in my view, fiction is freedom and any restraints on that are intolerable.
I haven't had the egomaniac star yet in any of my films. It's always been a pleasure.
When I came into the Perry family, it was just kind of one of those deals where they were the only family I had.
My first album, 'Get Lifted,' was a hip-hop soul album that had some of its roots in the church, as far as the sonic choices, in the way that I sing and write songs. I have always had that as part of my background and part of my influence when I am making music.
Writing my first book, I think in hindsight I went into it saying, 'It's gonna sell.' I was earning enough to scrape by sometime around a book or two before 'Tell No One.' I moved up from $50,000 to $75,000, then $150,000 for each book. I had never thought I would be doing anything else. I had enough encouragement.
Growing up, I had a very happy childhood, with two parents who are still very much together.
I've had kids come to me and say, 'Oh, I loved your movie when I was a kid, and I became a marine biologist.' It's crazy.
My dad was always in sales. My mom had a heart for the ages. Worked in recreation, doing rehabilitation in nursing homes. Very nice, practical folks who were very proud of me but had no inclination toward the stage in any way.
I don't think I can tell any stories about how I lived in a van in Alaska. I grew up in the suburbs, I even had my own room. We weren't poor. Everything was very normal.
I really believed that the priests were acquainted with my thoughts; and often stood in great awe of them. They often told me they had power to strike me dead at any moment.
In my era, where I'm from, I only had Donald Whiteside. He's from Englewood and he's the only one that came out of Englewood. Other than him, I really didn't have anyone else to look up to that was from my area. So in seeing him, I never gave up hope, just kept playing and then I realized that I might have a future in basketball.
The way they taught history in schools was not appealing. They stressed wars and dates. They left the people out. I was attracted to history by the need to know about the people. In China, I went to a British school, and we just learned about kings and queens. Back in America, I had the regular social studies curriculum.
The first song I ever wrote was when I was 12, and it had, like, four lines in it. You progress and get better.
I had the chance to learn from some really talented people who have taught me a lot.
The last 10 years I have had to bulk up for roles and I'm naturally skinny, so I have eaten and killed so many chickens! I wouldn't even want to count. I need to balance that out.
I had body insecurities when I was younger. I still do.
Living in Pakistan, you didn't have a sense of how huge and varied America was geographically. I had visited once. I thought of it as this crazy, happy, exciting place where everybody's rich, and there's stuff everywhere. Compared to Pakistan, it's not untrue. Compared to Pakistan, the streets are paved with gold.
For years, I had a top secret clearance and never left Russia. Just once did I go to Bulgaria with my wife for a holiday at the Golden Sands resort, but I could not mention my real name. I was allowed to travel abroad only in the early 1990s.
My father, if anything, first and last, was a man of words. He loved stories; he didn't live for stories, exactly, but I think he lived through stories. I think, like many writers, he loved stories about things he had experienced as much as, if not more than, he loved the experiences themselves.
With two little boys in diapers, I had to keep it simple if I were going to have a life at all.
When we were kids, I know when I saw 'Pinocchio' it had a huge impact. I was ten years old, and I went home, and I was drawing the characters.
My mother's feeling about men in general were always a bit of a mystery to me. She had difficulties in Puerto Rico with the men in her life. Her brothers abused her. It's very easy to be judgmental, but more often than not, there are mitigating circumstances, and children are not usually aware of those.
This 'Whoa, Nellie!' thing is overrated. There were all kinds of stories going around. People said I had a mule in Georgia named Nellie. Well, we had a mule in Georgia, but her name was Pearl.
