I was at the Royal Shakespeare Company, where I thought, in my naivete, I'd stay for the rest of my career. I'd thought I'd work up through the ranks and go from spear carrier - or in my case, the eunuch, which was several rungs below the spear carrier - to King Lear.
My father was a fighter pilot, so I moved around the world when I was young. Then I ended up in Kansas. I'd just sort of gravitated toward the arts, and I had always loved music and really loved theater even though I didn't want to act.
Basically, I wear sandals, like Jesus. When it gets cold in Chicago, the snow way up to my knees, I still wear my sandals. But that's me.
My style overall is whatever is comfy, whatever I feel like wearing that day that I feel good in. I have some really classic pieces that I can dress up, dress down, wear to the movies or wear to a really nice dinner. And I love a really good leather jacket.
Whatever I ended up picking or choosing was always going to be a creative outlet for me.
Our greatest human adventure is the evolution of consciousness. We are in this life to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirit, and light up the brain.
If you want to relate me to the newer cats, let's go. Let's go line for line and bar for bar. If it's all about spitting and metaphors and MCing and lyrics and entendres, I will eat 99 percent of you dudes up.
I was literally in the car every day on my way home from school trying to hurry up and get the homework done so I could just go home and watch the cartoons and not be bothered.
I wake up every morning and I wish I were dead, and so does Jim.
In previous generations, there was purpose; you had to die, but there was God, and literature and culture would go on. Now, there is no God, and our species is imminently doomed, so there is no purpose. We get up, raise families, have bank accounts, fix our teeth and everything else. But really, there is utterly no purpose except to be alive.
I've done three Broadway shows; once the curtain goes up, that's it. I mean, you prepare and you rehearse like crazy, but after opening night, the director's not there anymore, you know. He gives you notes during previews after each performance, but opening night, you're on your own.
Mostly I listen to old-time music, some bluegrass, some Americana stuff, too many to name. But of the younger acts, there are The Freight Hoppers, who were big in the '90s, and The Foghorn Stringband from Oregon, and there's a lot of young string bands coming up now, basically punkers who play acoustic instruments forming new bands.
I think rap music is brought up, gangster rap in particular, as well as video games, every other thing they try to hang the ills of society on as a scapegoat.
And I didn't grow up wanting to be a director. I grew up wanting to be a writer, so for me, that was always the goal - to be a novelist, not a screenwriter. And I think, again, if I didn't have the novels, maybe I'd be much more frustrated by not having directed yet.
But I'd made up my mind early on in life that I never wanted to be a mother.
People seem to be losing their sense of boundaries more and more, what people are willing to put up on the internet, especially blogs. People seem to assume that only their friends are going to read it but anyone in the world could read it at any time.
As for my schedule, I tend to go to bed at the same time every night and get up at the same time every morning, and I try to be as productive as possible. Some days, I can devote to one specific thing. Other days, it's a catch-all day.
I know my body's limits. I've never enjoyed Spin classes, where they're like, 'Push it further!' I'm like, 'No. If I pull something, I can't work tomorrow.' That's why I gave up Bikram yoga.
I didn't go to theater school. I didn't go to Julliard. But I've lived a lot. I've seen a lot. I feel like that makes up for a little bit.
I suffer from an enormous amount of self-doubt, so the fact that 'Pachinko' has been so kindly received has encouraged me not to give up, as I'm always telling myself that, 'Maybe this isn't a smart idea.'
I have a strange habit of walking down streets and staring up, rather than looking at shopfronts and stuff like that.
My parents came from a poor background and worked their way up because of education. They saw it as a way to succeed. So they cared about me getting straight A grades when I was growing up.
To win elections, politicians have promised practically endless government spending and covered up the cost, leaving generations of taxpayers obligated to pay off the debt. That's wrong, but neither the U.S. nor Europe has a plan to stop it.
In the end, someone is depending on me to show up on their set looking a specific way, whether that's 40 pounds overweight or 40 pounds underweight - or looking like a stripper.
I was brought up on animal grease.
Even as a kid, I never liked breakfast. I just don't like to eat then. I like to get up and work. I think sticking a whole bunch of carbohydrates in your stomach in the morning is probably the worst way to begin the day.
I wanted to come up with a hybrid show of sorts that wasn't your traditional 'dump and stir' type of cooking show.
I grew up on the south side of Chicago, most of that time on welfare. My mother and sister and I used to live with my grandparents and various cousins. We shared a two-bedroom tenement, and the three of us slept in one of those bedrooms and had a set of bunk beds.
Growing up with three brothers and three sisters, I was the storyteller of the family... what my mother called 'The Liar.'
If you want to become a fossil, you actually need to die somewhere where your bones will be rapidly buried. You then hope that the earth moves in such a way as to bring the bones back up to the surface. And then you hope that one of us lot will walk around and find small pieces of you.
You will die but the carbon will not; its career does not end with you. It will return to the soil, and there a plant may take it up again in time, sending it once more on a cycle of plant and animal life.
I detest talking about myself. There is a reason why people pick up an instrument and put it between themselves and the rest of the world.
Country music, to me, is what I grew up on.
In order for Obamacare's cost structure to work, millions of Americans must sign up to pay inflated prices; that would help pay for the subsidies to cover insurance company costs on those with pre-existing conditions.
Part of any solution to get our economy going should include steps to free up our small businesses by peeling back unnecessarily burdensome regulations, ending the continual threats of tax hikes, and addressing the cloud of federal debt that hangs over our economy.
Up to this day, there has been no proof of the existence of any intelligence other than the human.
