Let me tell you, there's nothing like pulling up to Fox Studios bumping Jeezy in your Mercedes.
For me, it's about moderation and discipline, and that's something I picked up from my dad. I don't believe in rigorous workouts but believe in eating right, going to bed early, and getting a proper workout.
I was born in Faridabad and I spent a major part of my growing up years in Delhi before shifting to Mumbai. Delhi-NCR is still very special to me.
As a writer, I have learned that each time I pick up my pencil I betray someone.
I grew up in a family that despised not only communism but collectivism, socialism, and any 'ism' that deprived the individual of his or her natural rights.
Someone has to stand up for wimps.
I've never had a very closely connected family. My parents split up when I was young and I was living with my mom for a little while, then I was kind of just on my own really young. It wasn't some kind of global tragedy, it was just never really a very close-knit family. So there was support in the sense that they didn't stand in my way.
I grew up with an impatience with the anti-scientific. So I'm a bit miffed with our current love affair with all things Eastern. If I sneeze on the set, 40 people hand me echinacea. But I'd no sooner take that than eat a pencil. Maybe that's why I took up boxing. It's my response to men in white pajamas feeling each other's chi.
I can't stand Anne Tyler books, but I gobble them up. It's like Updike - I can't stand him either, but I read everything he writes.
When I was growing up, I was really into 'Rent' and I actually slept on the street in New York all night to get to sit in the first few rows for it.
I think Facebook's dangerous. So many people I know get into trouble with Facebook... I'd rather just pick up the phone. Or Skype.
I hated singing and getting up in front of crowds.
I have about a dozen cassettes lying about which I use in random order. Very often, I pick up a cassette to dictate a letter, and I find my voice coming back at me with the lines of plays three years old.
A children's author on a soapbox is not a pleasant sight but I have become drawn into issues, slightly unwillingly, relating to young people, literacy and youth justice: just look at the number of young people we have locked up in prison, and the uselessness of it.
My brothers were tremendous shack builders. My shacks were horrible. My brothers once built a two-story shack from the ground up that was awesome!
I am always up to steal secrets from smart people.
When you're from the Bay Area, there's this chip on your shoulder that you inherently come up with, because us, as a region, we've been overlooked in the grand scheme of the history of the genre and the culture.
4Shbab has been dubbed Islamic MTV. Its creator, who is an Egyptian TV producer called Ahmed Abu Haiba, wants young people to be inspired by Islam to lead better lives. He reckons the best way to get that message across is to use the enormously popular medium of music videos. 4Shbab was set up as an alternative to existing Arab music channels.
I go to bed at 2 A.M. and get up at 7 A.M. - I've never been a sleeper. But I definitely get sick every month-and-a-half.
I grew up in the classic American-Jewish suburbia, which has a whole different sense of what it means to be Jewish than anywhere else in the world.
I love horror. I love 'The Shining,' 'Friday the 13th,' 'Halloween,' all those kinds of things. I love zombies, especially '28 Days Later' and '28 Weeks Later,' where the zombies are going faster than the George Romero ones. I love being scared; there's something that's awesome about your heart rate going up like that.
One of the worst things you can do is have a limited budget and try to do some big looking film. That's when you end up with very bad work.
I grew up in a family of Republicans. And when I was 18 and registering to vote, my mom's only instruction was 'You just go in and pull the big Republican lever.' That's my welcome to adulthood. She's like, 'No, don't even read it. Just pull the Republican lever.
I never know how to give advice to a writer because there's so much you could say, and it's hard to translate your own experience. But of course, I always try. The main thing that I usually end up saying is to read a lot. To read a great deal and to learn from that.
I think that when moms just give themselves up, the kids know. They feel guilty; they resent their mother for making them feel guilty, and then they grow up and do the same thing. Whereas my mother showed me that it's okay to focus on yourself.
This album means a lot to me, and partnering with Cracker Barrel to have it in their stores is very exciting. I am a big fan of the brand, so it was a natural fit to team up with them to have 'You Should Be Here' in its stores nationwide.
I don't have to think. My only job is to show up and win.
If you want to stay fit, surround yourself with a couple of chicks who are fired up, so that the one day you're not, you can feed off their energy.
It is the thing that keeps me up at night - the notion that you have individuals in the United States who are looking at computer screens and who are becoming radicalized.
I've definitely gone through phases where I'm not happy with my life, and you notice in little ways until they start adding up.
I get kids from all different cultures and nationalities coming up to me now, all wanting to be F1 drivers. They feel the sport is open to everyone.
I see friends who are in different genres of music, and they say they're so burnt playing the same stuff every night. That's why you see a country act wanting to go out and play an old classic rock song. But what cracks me up is that they all want to be Jimmy Buffett. I can't figure that out.
Anything you can do to help someone, I just think it's so important because there's a lot of kids that look up athletes of all size and shapes in a lot of different fields, not necessarily in the basketball field. They get involved emotionally with those people because there's something about certain athletes that people rally around.
In the field of fantastic fiction, the question of world-building is not uncontroversial. But I grew up with 'Dungeons and Dragons,' so that whole world-building thing is very close to my heart.
I can't stop watching 'Pan Am.' When I was growing up, my father worked as an engineer in Turkey, and we always flew Pan Am. The stewardesses were so glamorous! When they gave me a set of those golden wings, I felt very grown-up. Not only is the show's plot full of mystery and infidelity, they get the period details just right.
I have no sentiments for nationality or for soil. But I grew up in Israel, so those things are in my blood, and I want to be part of Israeli culture.
