Ice Cube's the coolest dad. A lot of parents - a lot of kids do not think their parents are cool. Oh, no. My dad's cool... You know, I was born in 1991. That's when 'Boyz n the Hood' came out. So I've always see him on TV. I don't see everybody else's dad, you know. So I've always had a sense of, you know, he's cool. He's in the light.
People would always ask me how I came up with my music and what it felt like to make music, and I would always see colours, and then I found out that that was synaesthesia. It helps me understand songs and what I like.
Magic came very easy for me when I was a kid. When I was 8 years old I started doing it, and by the time I was 12, I was already published in magic books.
I've always liked telling stories. That probably came from my dad, who definitely had the gift of gab and who wove a kind of personal folklore about his youth - stories full of adventure and ghosts and wild antics.
For so long as the Jew has even one ally, he will be convinced - in his smallness of mind - that his salvation came from that ally. It is only when he is alone - against all of his own efforts and frantic attempts - that he will, through no choice, be compelled to turn to G-d.
There is commerciality in storytelling, even in a film or a piece of literature. These things exist. That's why stories came to be: to hold attention and, while you're not looking, you'll get hopefully some nutritional value that the author has been working up. That's narrative; that's passing stuff down.
When we came to Iraq, we didn't understand the complexity - what it meant for a society to live under a brutal dictatorship with ethnic and sectarian divisions. When we first got here, we made a lot of mistakes. We were like a blind man, trying to do the right thing but breaking a lot of things.
Since I was an atheist for many years and came to believe in God through my studies in science, it frustrated me to see students and parents who viewed faith and science as enemies.
Recruiting Station was a story that came as the result of many anxious awakenings during many nights.
I came from a working-class family. My dad was in a union. I never forgot what it was like to be a private.
This conviction brought me, in the summer of 1978, to the Free Trade Unions - formed by a group of courageous and dedicated people who came out in the defense of the workers' rights and dignity.
I never set out to write songs about the world around me... it just kind of came about as a result of paying more attention to things.
I came out to California to live with my mom in Orange County for a while, and then I came up to Hollywood. I had just turned nineteen. I took an acting class at Playhouse West and decided, 'Wow, I think I can do this!' I studied really hard for three years before I got an agent.
No, writing musicals is the hardest thing in the world. And it was really funny, because I remember when the South Park movie came out, there were some critics that said, 'Well it's obvious that in order to get it to be 90 minutes they filled some time with music.'
I did not direct my life. I didn't design it. I never made decisions. Things always came up and made them for me. That's what life is.
When we came to this country, unfortunately, my father lost his job, and we were this close to destitution. We were put on food stamps. We were put in public housing.
I don't get nothing but love. In every ghetto all over the world. Nothing but love. They respect that I came outta there and I'm doing it the right way. You can't do nothing but respect that.
As little boys, my brother and I used to spend hours with my grandmother, asking her about the details of how she came to America. She could only give us a smattering of details, but they all found their way into our collective imagination, eventually becoming a part of our own cultural identity and connection to the past.
I started writing prose before I started writing television. Then 'Breaking Bad' came around, and to me, writing 'Breaking Bad' is like writing a novel each season. So it's been very creatively satisfying writing for the show.
When I was reading books for 'Seesaw Girl,' I came across several references to the fact that in the 11th and 12th centuries, Korean pottery was considered the finest in the world. I liked that - the idea of a little tiny country being the best at something.
I remember I read this harsh review about my show, and one of my friends told me that this was the exact same stuff people said about Madonna. And it's like, she didn't care. Madonna just came out and was herself. I respect that a lot.
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
For 'Ghostbusters,' the thing that makes it such an amazing franchise and an amazing idea is that it is adds the element of physics and technology. It's not just about ghosts. Who the heck came up with that? It is such a good idea, such a unique combination of stuff from different genres. Ghosts and sci fi.
In my whole career, in fact, I can remember only two first nights when a show was at its peak on the first night. And I just wish we could devise a system where critics came not on a single evening but were given a choice of performances to attend.
The man who buried Malcolm X - my Muslim imam, priest - he, after I got beat up by police... came to me, and he said, 'You don't need this American name.' And I was susceptible to it at the time because, God knows, I had just gotten whipped near to death. So he gave me an Arab name; he gave me the name Amir Barakat.
What counts is what you do with your money, not where it came from.
Actors on stage, you can go from playing a myriad of roles, from Shakespeare to a Eugene O'Neil drama, and it's the norm. I came up in a world where you're supposed to be able to do three things very well. Act, sing, dance, paint, do something. The emphasis was on versatility.
The revolution came so suddenly, and in a way so utterly different from what we expected.
We didn't know the importance of home computers before the Internet. We had them mostly for fun, then the Internet came along and was enabled by all the PCs out there.
If a girl came up to me and asked me out, that's a little forward. Guys like it when girls play hard to get!
Think about how our country was built. The greatness came from our diversity; the greatness came from individuals with different perspectives coming together.
When Captain Moussa Dadis Camara came to power, too many thought he would hold to his promise to stand down, introduce democratic elections and restore the rule of law.
Originally, I came from Texas, and we lived on - I guess you'd call it welfare, what we called relief.
We all lived in the same house, or most of us did. And as far as I can make out we were confined to the property, because at twenty-four hours' notice we'd have to do a gig somewhere. So you couldn't leave the building for more than twelve hours in case a gig came through.
It's rural America. It's where I came from. We always refer to ourselves as real America. Rural America, real America, real, real, America.
I came up with American Splendor. Some people think it's American Squalor.
