What winning is to me is not giving up, is no matter what's thrown at me, I can take it. And I can keep going.
I grew up with J. Edgar Hoover. He was the G-man, a hero to everybody, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was the big, feared organization. He was ahead of his time as far as building up forensic evidence and fingerprinting. But he took down a lot of innocent people, too.
You get caught up thinking about the future, you lose sight of the present.
I understand human needs. I grew up where far too many people lived day to day without elemental needs like food and shelter.
It may be a coincidence, but from the minute I took anti-depressants, I didn't pick up a guitar or a pen for seven years.
I don't get offered many dramatic roles. As soon as my face pops up in a movie, everyone knows I'm the funny guy.
I often debate liberals on Fox News Channel who tend to start yelling and attacking when they run out of facts or common sense. I suppose these folks figure if they bow up and get in our faces, we'll just back down and see the world their way.
Growing up, I was always into sports - basketball and volleyball - but I wasn't really a runner.
Robert Bolt's storytelling is the kind that I grew up with and aspired to.
I don't think anybody in my family meant there to be any pressure for me to write. But our parents were incredibly verbal and wrote for a living. The house was full of books, and we all grew up steeped in language. I mean, our mother recited poetry at the dinner table.
Sometimes my backswing gets long, and I get in bad positions. The club also can get behind me coming down, so I have to flip my hands to catch up to my body.
College isn't in everyone's hearts. I am living proof, though, that school doesn't mess up your plans. It gives you more experiences to write about.
Elton John can be a master of the sleight of hand. The arrangements make it seem like there are substantial melodies underneath the tracks - but almost nothing demands repeated listenings. Similarly, he always sounds like he's singing up a storm, but his voice glosses over the material, reducing most things to an uninteresting sameness.
As a little boy, I apparently had a predilection for undoing latch gates, running up pathways and ringing doorbells - and then running off again and away before the door was opened behind me.
I grew up in a very urban, bohemian family where everyone was a hippie or a pacifist. It was artistically and intellectually stimulating, but they were definitely not into outdoor sports or activities.
Even as my father grew up in Boston, Massachusetts, signs told him: 'No Irish Need Apply.'
I'd split up with a boyfriend and gone to Vermont to stare at my navel, and then 9/11 happened, and I spent days being scared of what was happening in the world. So I made a list of all the things I wanted to do, and at the top was adopt a baby. Nine months and two days later, I brought my daughter home.
There are a few 'Raw Shark Texts' tattoos floating around the Internet now, so I'm gathering them up to post on my forum. It's a strange thought, knowing that readers are tattooing themselves with something I've created, but it feels wonderful to have added something that people care about to the world.
I study the universe. It's the second oldest profession. People have been looking up for a long time.
Playing Mark Antony in Julius Caesar was the most thrilling thing I've done. You get these speeches that were written for men, and you're running around like an action hero, climbing scaffolding and beating people up. It was very freeing.
Barack Obama knows that to create an economy built to last, we need to focus on middle-class families. Families who stay up on Sunday nights pacing the floor, like my dad did, while their children, tucked in bed, dream big dreams. Families who aren't sure what Monday morning will bring, but who believe our nation's best days are still ahead.
When I was growing up in Russia, my grandmothers would cook the best pancakes in the world, the best meatballs, the best dumplings.
There's a reason why the Foo Fighters don't blast out Nirvana songs every night: because we have a lot of respect for them. You know, that's hallowed ground. We have to be careful. We have to tread lightly. We have talked about it before, but the opportunity hasn't really come up, or it just hasn't felt right.
The acting training in school was great, but it was mostly fun being young and in New York. Because my upbringing was so transient, New York ended up being my home. I've been living in New York longer than I have anywhere else in my life.
Doing a play, you have a little bit more time, obviously. You rehearse for a month before you get up in front of people. It's a totally different energy. With film, TV, you want to try to capture lightning-in-a-bottle moments. I don't try to rehearse as much with that stuff, because you want those sparks of something to come out, if they do.
I had true rivalries. Not only did I want to beat my opponent, but I didn't want to let him up, either. I had a rivalry with Mac, Lendl, Borg. Everybody knew there was tension between us, on court and off. That's what's really ingrained in my mind: 'This is real. This isn't a soft rivalry.' There were no hugs and kisses.
When I was growing up, I said to my ex-girlfriend, 'I will not be successful until everyone in Holland knows my name.' And it worked.
Oh man, I would definitely love to work with Kanye on something. But it really is all up to him, so whatever he wants to do, I'm with it.
I know that if I went to other studios, like in Vancouver, that those are set up to be as professional and as true, so it's just a different flavour, it's a different sound, but I think both have their place.
In the '80s, Ronald Reagan inspired me to become politicized, because I grew up in that era when everything I cared about was under attack.
Evil comes in through the cable and through the Internet. We look forward to the advent of driverless cars. But they can be hacked. You could be riding along, and some 14-year-old in Romania takes over your car, so you end up running the lights and losing your brakes or, worse, listening to Eminem. What's the purpose?
We're talking about growing up in regular families, dreaming about better things, instead of popping bottles in the club and spending a lot of money that you don't have while living in your mother's basement.
I think growing up on a farm in a certain amount of isolation, with not a lot of friends nearby, makes you entertain yourself and kind of grows your imagination - being alone is quite good for all that. You make up stories, talk to the animals, let them be an audience, a bunch of cows.
My big downfall is deep-dish pizza from Chicago. That is why I can't go vegan - I can't give up cheese. I can't give up dairy.
My mom started working at the California Shakespeare Theater in Oakland when I was two years old, so I've always grown up around theater.
Credit default swap is basically just an agreement that I have with you, where I sell you insurance on some bond you own. If the bond goes belly up, I promise to pay you. And as long as the bond doesn't go belly up, you pay me for selling you insurance.
