I have an incredible role model in my mom. She was a single mother raising two kids in New York.
Usually, new producers and writers want to put their stamp on a show. They don't want to continue what's working. They want to reinvent the wheel. It's an ego thing.
I moved to New York - I attended NYU, did a BFA in Acting at NYU. I was really into hip-hop, so I started battling, like '8 Mile.' I used to rap battle.
I was an early reader, reading even before kindergarten, and since we did not have books in my home, my older brother, Alexander, was responsible for our trip every week to the public library to exchange books already read for new ones to be read.
Probably my favorite piece of music, as an album taken as a whole, is Bruce Springsteen's 'Greetings from Asbury Park.' I just think it's incredibly pure. It's a sound that sort of broke new ground, and I think it paved the way for a hundred people that sound very similar.
I'm actually from Mt. Kisco, New York, which is in Westchester County, and when I auditioned for 'Dukes,' I told them I was from Snailville, Georgia, which doesn't exist, and I'd just graduated first in my class from the Georgia School of High Performance Driving, which also doesn't exist. But they bought it.
I kept extensions in until I finished high school. Although, once I got to college, that's when it all started to shift. I think it was just growing up and moving to New York, where I saw so many different people, vibes, and looks, and everyone really owned it. That led me to feel more free, take more risks, and go back into my natural hair.
We moved around a lot when I was growing up. I was always the new kid in class, but I was good at making friends. With an upbringing like that, I was either going to become an actor or a politician. Thank God I became an actor! I'm not cut out for politics.
Resilience is accepting your new reality, even if it's less good than the one you had before.
My heroes were people like Jim Jarmusch. Scorsese was my god. Spike Lee was exciting, doing exactly what we thought we were going to do: personal movies based in, and about, New York. My heroes were all participating in an economic model that was collapsing as I was finishing film school.
A lawsuit with no legal precedent, seeking no damages, from no jury, in the name of stopping something that isn't happening? Only in New York.
I never really thought of my neighborhood in South Philly as being a neighborhood; it was more a state of mind. For people who aren't familiar with those kinds of places, it's a whole different thing. Like, 42nd Street in New York City is a state of mind.
I take certain steps to make sure I'm relevant artistically. I always have new music and a reason to be on the road. I'm not just playing 'Get By' over and over. I have 12 albums.
The big problem with songwriting for me is starting a new song. It's the thing where all the anguish exists, not in the writing of the song, but the starting of the new song.
Where consumption is both conspicuous and competitive, humanity will never run out of new wishes. All the while, industry creates new desires that are marketed, in the great fashion paradox, as both novelty and need.
I am excited to join the Workday Board at an exciting time in the company's growth and look forward to leveraging my past experience as a technologist and entrepreneur to provide advice as they continue to look at new areas of growth.
Wrestling in Japan, obviously, the fans are a little bit different - very quiet, very respectful in New Japan - but here in the WWE, these fans are going nuts.
I love New Orleans. I love jazz. I grew up practicing jazz piano, and that's just been such a cool genre to me. There's a lot of talent there.
If the plane lost all my luggage, and I was somewhere sunny like Ibiza, I would just get a bikini, shorts, T-shirt, and sandals. If it was somewhere colder like New York, I'd go for jeans, jacket, and a pair of Louboutins.
I still have a feeling that I haven't written the best that I can write. I think all poets must feel this: that there is constantly something new to be discovered in the language. It's like a thrilling encounter, and you can find things.
I'm not one of those New Yorkers who so much identifies themselves with the city that they can't imagine living anywhere else. I plan to live a lot of other places, but it is defiantly is a big part of who I am. I have a complicated relationship with it. It has changed so much, but I love it, and it's my home. I'm really glad I grew up there.
Growing up in New York, I was sort of shocked when I realized that my children are Californians. They are 14 years old, and I explain to them frequently that they will never realize the glory of a snow day. You wake up and the world says, 'Oops, it's too much fun to go to school, you've got to stay home and deal with the snow!'
New York has always embraced me.
I went to a radio station on Long Island in 1982, and thank goodness for me, it was so new that there was no receptionist. So the DJ opened up his booth, and took my tape and listened to it and thought it was a hit song.
Playing in New York is special to me because you are surrounded by so many communities and a strong Latin community, including the Washington Heights neighborhood. I come to Washington Heights for real Dominican food that reminds me of my hometown, and it's a great place to visit.
I started this charity, Fashion for Relief, in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina happened. New Orleans was actually the first place I visited in the United States. It was one of my first big jobs, a shoot for British 'Elle.' It was April 14, 1986.
Sometimes, if I need assistance on the government level, I can appeal through official channels. For example, when I bought the New Jersey Nets, President Medvedev raised the issue with President Obama, who voiced support for the idea, which is always a nice thing to have going for us.
I was a huge Bowie fan since I was 12 years old. That was the first 'punk' rock I got into in the Seventies. I didn't find out about a lot of the other stuff that was going on, like New York Dolls and Roxy Music, until a lot later.
In New York, working at the foundry, I was making these little figures. I desperately would like to make big figures, but I just can't do it; my hands don't do it. We were talking about making bronze plinths, and then we made one, a square one. I wrote on it, then I put a little figure on top, and it just looked really good. It worked.
I'm never doing a new album. I'll probably do nothing but singles. I'm as good as anybody out there lyrically and conceptually and can go toe to toe with the best of them throughout history. But I don't know how much longer I'll be doing it. It's not really fun anymore.
Growing your own business is great. Watching your ideas come to life, taking care of new customers and watching them become repeat customers, and successfully building your team is a feeling that can't be matched.
I think I got disappointed over the years about New York, about the States. You know, sometimes you go and visit Europe and see good old socialism in its good part! You see public concern about art, and young people's participation and young faces in the audience.
A lot of our Democratic consultants have fallen into the self-defeating prescription that the candidate that runs the most negative ads wins. I have a new theory: Positive is the new negative.
All through my twenties, I lived in very walkable cities - Philadelphia, San Francisco, and New York.
Growing up I always used to shop in Oxfam. I'd find things for 50p and then take them home, cut them up and make them into something new.
New York and Dublin are now suburbs of each other.
