To me, creatively challenging myself is my version of owning the Nets.
I don't really consider myself a black man in Hollywood. I live in Brooklyn... and on purpose.
I've made a promise to myself to be a 100% healthy person if nothing else.
Myself, I don't think you will ever get security in the Mideast until you have what on the surface appears to be fair to both sides. You have to have leaders committed to peace, on both sides. One side can't impose a solution.
When I'm on stage, I get real happy there. Maybe that's the only time in my adult life I feel like myself.
I am not playing on stage. I am living the situation. I cannot cut emotions and sing. I never save myself.
If it weren't the problem of politics for me, it would be another. And yet, sometimes it's so difficult. And I feel sorry for myself. And then hate myself for this feeling of self-pity.
When I'm back at home it's just reality. I kind of separate myself from Hollywood.
In therapy, I see myself in the mirror differently.
I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.
I'm not a person who defends myself very often. I kind of let my actions speak for me.
It's interesting for me to always make myself look very different.
I grew up reading '2000 AD' and the occasional Transformers and GI Joe comic, but when I could finance comics myself, I lasted only a little reading superheroes.
Now I look back and think if I'd spent more time enjoying myself instead of crying into my pillow over men, my 20s would have been fabulous!
It seems that it had been destined before that I should occupy myself so thoroughly with the vulture, for it comes to my mind as a very early memory, when I was still in the cradle, a vulture came down to me, he opened my mouth with his tail and struck me a few times with his tail against my lips.
I've done a lot of work in the gym preparing myself for what is certain to be pretty strenuous pre-season training - something I've not previously experienced. And I knocked local football on the head this winter, simply to ensure I didn't pick up any injuries.
I try to take the time to appreciate and I certainly do appreciate and I do feel proud but that is probably one of the things I need to work on, building a bit of time for myself.
I could only imagine myself being successful.
Tolkien is considered the grandfather of fantasy and, for me, I consider myself the grandson, with Terry Brooks as the kind of crazy uncle of fantasy, being the one who brought me into it.
My number-one goal is to never feel like I'm strictly defining myself. The minute I feel like I'm doing that as anything - as theatrical, as feminist, as songwriter - I feel like the minute I name it, I'm stuck in a box.
It's not a field, I think, for people who need to have success every day: if you can't live with a nightly sort of disaster, you should get out. I wouldn't describe myself as lacking in confidence, but I would just say that the ghosts you chase you never catch.
Drawing was a cheap way for me to express myself. It gave a focus to my thinking and my life from a very early age.
I suppose I didn't cry in all the cancer crap stuff because I felt I couldn't lose the battle, and part of the battle was holding myself together.
My mom brought me up by herself, so I was a latchkey kid. I would walk myself back from school and spent a lot of time at home alone, watching TV. There weren't a lot of Latinas - or any women of color. And the ones I saw were usually presented as stereotypes or treated like jokes.
You know, I was such a big Beatles fan, and when I'd buy a new album I'd invariably hate it the first time I heard it 'cause it was a mixture of absolute joy and absolute frustration. I couldn't grasp what they'd done, and I'd hate myself for that.
Yes, but another writer I read in high school who just knocked me out was Theodore Dreiser. I read An American Tragedy all in one weekend and couldn't put it down - I locked myself in my room. Now that was antithetical to every other book I was reading at the time because Dreiser really had no style, but it was powerful.
As an actor you get categorized by other people, but it's not like I arrange myself into comedy mode or serious mode. If it's good writing you just have to play it true - if it's funny, it's funny. But obviously you don't want it to be amusing if you're playing Hedda Gabler!
I have some pride in the things I've done, but I'm pretty hard on myself. Part of looking at my old work is to motivate me to try harder.
In the past, I've allowed myself to record songs that I wish I had not, but agreed to for one reason or another.
I hate myself in interviews. All of a sudden, you stop and you're like, 'Chris, how dare you?' I don't live in Darfur. I have both legs. But you can't walk around all the time being like, 'I'm so grateful I'm not in Darfur.'
I feel like I have to top myself every film I do, and it gets hard.
Every time I act on a fear, I feel disappointed in myself. I have a lot of fear. If I can quit all fear in my life and all guilt, then I tend to be much, much more living up to my standards. I've never seen a person fail if they didn't fear failure.
I normally don't concern myself with, 'Will audiences like me or like my character?'
Quite often I can be in a bookshop, standing beneath a great big picture of myself and paying for a book with a credit card clearly marked John Grisham, yet no one recognises me. I often say I'm a famous author in a country where no one reads.
I think the success of a talk show depends on how true it is to the personality of the person hosting it. The shows I really admire, like 'Oprah' and 'Ellen,' are distinctively like their hosts, so I think my show will be successful only if we try to stay consistent to my own sense of myself.
I wouldn't call myself a feminist, because I think there are differences between men and women.
