As a small kid, I came across things like these early Edward Gorey books in department-store bookstores. These were these really unusual objects to me. I didn't know how they fit into the comic world or into newspaper comics.
My dad sent Frank Sinatra a dollar bill to autograph, and when it came back, signed, he had it framed: it was always up on the wall in whatever flat we were in.
I think my main two songs are 'FWU' and 'Get Away.' 'FWU' made a cool point because it came out right after Chris Brown's 'Loyal' came out. I combated it with 'FWU,' a song that basically says, 'These women are loyal.'
I'm a huge Spike Lee fan. I saw 'Do The Right Thing' twice in the same night when it first came out and had long conversations with all my friends about the issues in it.
I came to America at the age of 17 as an exchange student, and a year later, I was a student at Dartmouth. I would say that the rather weak foundation of my Christianity was effectively battered at Dartmouth. I've had mostly a secular career. But I became intellectually interested in Christianity again in my mid-30s.
I was a little-known political consultant until Bill Clinton made me. When he came upon hard times, I felt it my duty - whatever my personal misgivings - to stick by him.
My wife was born and raised in Italy until she was about 9, and then she came to America, and her mom was a great cook, and they have great recipes, and whenever her mom would come into town, we would have all these friends just randomly showing up at our house, and eventually we figured out why. They wanted Mama's cooking.
By the time I came to L.A. I'd already cried on movies of the week with two of the women from 'Knots Landing'.
I don't read books. I read 'On the Road' in high school, and that was awesome, so I guess that's my favorite book. 'To Kill a Mockingbird,' even though I didn't read it, that's the greatest story. SparkNotes came in when I was in high school, and that was the greatest invention.
The ship's transporters - which let the crew 'beam' from place to place - really came out of a production need. I realized with this huge spaceship, I would blow the whole budget of the show just in landing the thing on a planet.
You don't have to agree with my vote, but you need to at least understand how I came to my vote.
I got Elliott Smith's photography book as a gift before. The publisher of that book's logo were glasses, and those glasses came to my mind when I was thinking of having a tattoo.
When the Killers first came out, a lot of people thought we were English, and it touched a chord in me, because my roots are very American.
For a long time, Nella Larsen was the mystery woman of the Harlem Renaissance. In the late 1920s, she published two sophisticated novels, 'Quicksand' and 'Passing,' and then her writing life came to an end. She died in obscurity in 1964.
I was eight when we came to Australia. It was five amazing weeks onboard this ship - it was the Northern Star.
India was secular even when Muslims hadn't come here and Christians hadn't set foot on this soil. It is not as if India became secular after they came. They came with their own modes of worship, and they, too, were given a place of honor and respect. They had the freedom to worship God as per their wish and inclination.
There have been times when I've been broke, and a job came along, and I've said, 'Yeah! Let's do it!' But I will never do something without having a feeling of knowing how to play it. I've been in projects that I felt terrible about afterwards, but I've always had something that sparked me while I was doing it.
People came to the All-Star Game to see the dunk contest.
Man never had an idea - man will never have an idea, except those supplied to him by his surroundings. Every idea in the world that man has came to him by nature.
They say it's good but I didn't know what I was doing until I got into the suit and they put the moustache on me, and somehow, when I got all the drag on, it came out. It was the most amazing thing. I'm truly extraordinary.
And then it was like, wait, you can go to college and study theater? And act in plays? This is almost a racket, you know. And then when the opportunity came along to do it professionally, I thought I'd won the lottery.
It came to me that the one thing I could do was cook. And I figured I couldn't do any worse than the people running these places around town.
I love New York. I first came here with my Mom when I was in 9th grade. I took the subway for the first time and the doors closed between me and my Mom, and I was so scared. I could see her through the window and I didn't know what to do. I got off at the next stop and she caught up to me, but I couldn't stop crying.
I came from a very poor family. And I was able to rise up and actually win an Academy Award. And if I can do it, then any kid can do it.
I came to Vegas because I wanted to, not because I thought it could help my career. I didn't even know they had comedy clubs here.
I came to Mumbai in 2000 to do a hotel management course. Following this, I worked as a marketing executive with Hotel Sheraton in Muscat for a year. It was in 2004 that I participated in the Gladrags Mr. India contest and bagged the most popular model award. After that, I did few ramp shows and ads.
I was obsessed with country music when I was a kid, and it's definitely had a huge influence on the way I write songs. I was always attracted to songs that had a brilliant pun or a clever turn of phrase, but came from a dark, bitter place. As a writer, I've always gravitated towards that feeling.
My interest in acting came from seeing Broadway shows on summer trips to New York as a child. It was the original production of 'A Chorus Line' in an easy tie with the first 10 -15 minutes of Dustin Hoffman in 'Tootsie' that hooked me on the romantic idea that the impossible, difficult life of a struggling actor was for me.
I came to L.A. when I was 19, and my two roommates were blue-eyed, blond dudes. I helped coach them, and they both landed pilots.
Jeff Kinney is tall and has a great smile, but don't be fooled, he's as slick as they come. A real player. And how he came up with a book that appeals to kids ages 8-13 baffles me. He's an unbelievably kind man with a great family.
Evolutionary psychology has often been a field whose most prominent practitioners get embroiled in controversy - witness the 2010 case of Harvard professor Marc Hauser, whose graduate students came forward to say he'd been faking evidence for years.
I basically wrote five books with 'Night Soldiers,' called them novellas, and came in with a 600-page manuscript.
I came up with this statistic that if a kid makes something himself, he's 90 to 95% likely to try it. And of course, then, if it's good, he'll eat it!
I remember this song by Clay Walker that came out in the '90s called 'This Woman and This Man,' and it was about breaking up, loss, the pain of moving on, and my parents were just getting divorced at the time, so I listened to it over and over again.
I went to see President Nixon at the White House. It wasn't difficult to get a meeting because I was heavyweight champion of the world. So I came to Washington and walked around the garden with Nixon, his wife and daughter. I said: I want you to give Ali his licence back. I want to beat him up for you.
Every time a new CEO came, I got a promotion till I was made CEO myself.
