I was born and raised in the Bronx, and growing up here, you would go down the block, and on one corner you would hear bachata, on another corner some salsa, and of course there was hip-hop and R&B all over the place. So for me, it is very organic to have these combinations.
It's just like music when you reckon it up. It's like listening to Pavement it's just The Fall in 1985, isn't it? They haven't got an original idea in their heads.
I grew up in Florida, where if you weren't comfortable dancing, you weren't going to get any girls.
When you're around the kids, you feel like you act the most grown up just because you're supposed to lead. I say things, like every other parent, that reminds you of your own parents. One thing I do know about being a parent, you understand why your father was in a bad mood a lot.
We started off as this platform inside Facebook; and we were pretty clear from the beginning that that wasn't where it was going to end up. A lot of people saw it and asked, 'Why is Facebook trying to get all these applications inside Facebook when the web is clearly the platform?' And we actually agreed with that.
We spend most of our lives in relationships or bringing up children which are a product of relationships.
Bulking up for the Twilight films was one of the hardest things I've done... I had to give myself a lot of pep talks, as there was just so much gym time.
I made sure that instead of people making fun of me, like every comedian probably says, I made fun of myself first so they would get distracted and just laugh. I was pretty brutally picked on for a while growing up. It was always the really pretty girls, the hot girls and then there was me. So I had to do something to get any sort of attention.
I grew up in a school that had a big music program, and it was incredible. It's what I looked forward to during the day. I had chorus, strings, band.
There was a bidding war between Epic Records and Jive - now RCA - which was bittersweet. Just having labels bid over me was really cool, but I ended up going with Jive because it felt better over there, and they have my favorite artists like Usher, Chris Brown, and Justin Timberlake.
I was taught to be demure, so it was harder for me to learn how to stand up for myself and go, 'What do I want? What are my desires?'
I grew up seeing a lot of theatre, and it was theatre that really seduced me into acting - not film or television.
You wanna do a lot of backstory for your character - as an actor, you wanna research that. But on the show, it's fun to remain in that naive place as you go along, and be able to continue to discover things about your character as the writers come up with them.
I didn't grow up in a wealthy family at all. Being at home all day and watching movies, that was a luxury.
One of the most precious parts of acting is the work before you show up on the set, the time you spend being with your character before you bring that character to life. To me, that's the most rewarding part of it all. It feels very good to show up on a set just knowing that's with you.
If was, increased by a lack of railways in Russia - for bringing up supplies to our advancing troops.
I sent one e-mail in my life. I sent it to Jeff Raikes at Microsoft, and it ended up in court in Minneapolis, so I am one for one.
A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow. Don't wait for an inspired ending to come to mind. Work your way to the ending and see what comes up.
When I was little, I had concerts on the subway, and old ladies came up to me like, 'You are so good!'
At first, being a storyteller, it was fun to dress up and fun to sing songs and pretend to be very dramatic - all of that stuff was just fun early on.
In Utah, one word sums up our business prowess: investment. Simply put, we know we can't have long-term economic growth and maintain Utah's enviable quality of life without making some critical investments.
The first duty to children is to make them happy. If you have not made them so, you have wronged them. No other good they may get can make up for that.
I always wanted to be an anchorman, but after college I wound up working behind the scenes at CBS News for 10 years.
If you are the kind who has an active lifestyle and are not hellbent on looking all buffed up, I'd think a vegetarian diet is the way to go.
Never change the URL of your blog. I've done it once, and I lost much of my readership. It took several months to build up the same reader patterns and trust.
Typically I go in the studio and whatever I'm contemplating that day will wind up being a song. I don't come in with lyrics... I just go in and let it happen.
First thing that I put up in my office here at City Hall was a poster from 1971 when my mother ran for city council.
If you put up a blog, people can cut out the middle man and get material to you. Which is really helpful because a lot of time there's really cool stuff out there that we just don't see. Because, y'know, the agent is acting in our best interest, but it does sometimes prevent some of the good stuff from getting through.
Those powers that control the tent are not threatened at all by any activity that you engage in, in the shadows, that's not moving toward the tent. And I am rather convinced that we have a generation that is so preoccupied with life in the shadows, they never even focus on getting to the sunlight where you open up the big tent.
How do you catch a knuckleball? You wait until it stops rolling, then go pick it up.
I get up in the morning, torture a typewriter until it screams, then stop.
I grew up in Indianapolis, Ind., then a conservative, provincial city. Anglophilia was the first foreign language I was exposed to. Or maybe it was a way of one-upping the local white people. Or maybe it was an early manifestation of homohood.
If Britain is going to investigate journalists as terrorists - take and destroy our documents, force us to give up passwords and answer questions - how can we be sure we can protect our sources?
I think the fact that my wife died in Mexico City makes it very important to me; my life went up in smoke at that moment, the family and the future we were going to have. At that point, I was anchored to the city in a way I've never been anchored to a place before.
'Flash' has a family drama element, 'Arrow' has a epic saga/crime element, 'Supergirl' has a young-woman-in-the-city and a workplace element, and 'Legends' is like the Dirty Dozen teaming up.
I'm just trying to up my films - how every film should be better than the previous one. That's what I struggle for.
