My father's record collection was full of New Orleans music of all kinds. I used to listen to the radio in New York, and all there was on it at the time was Madonna and Michael Jackson, so it sort of passed me by.
The worst thing is always thinking of titles for records, with some reason behind them, and she just came out with the word, which she thought was a good word, a hard word, and since then we've sort of attached loads of meaning to it.
I've just built a studio in my mama's old bedroom, which I thought was fitting; she died last year. We've recorded nine songs recorded in there already; we're sort of just chipping away.
I read everything. I've always got a book on the go and I'm really nerdy about it, I get through books and don't remember anything about them afterwards. But I read all sorts, from classic to contemporary.
I lean into all things that are a little off. I will always wear overalls. At this point, I find a way in most of my life to wear a jumpsuit or an overall, anything that's sort of like an all-in-one situation. I do that on the red carpet a lot.
The news is what it is. It's going to be good, it's going to be positive, it's going to be negative. It's going to have all sorts of effects on candidates always.
I was actually not some sort of a child prodigy by any stretch.
Food is sort of like the Jewish sense of humor, a defense mechanism. It is one of the things that helped the Jews survive through 2,000 years of an often very harsh Diaspora.
I'm from Kingston, R.I., sort of on the University of Rhode Island campus - on the margins of that, actually.
I never thought I'd be doing poetry books. I never really studied poetry. But the first one I did was after my mother died, and I realized that people sort of think and talk about her style and fashion, but in fact, what made her the person she was was really her love of reading and ideas.
It's true I'm more widely recognised now and get invited to take part in all sorts of events and projects but as a person, I haven't changed.
Lots of people would say House doesn't have any charm at all. I would disagree, though: I find him immensely charming and endlessly entertaining. He has a sort of grace and a wit about him, and ultimately, I think he is on the side of the angels.
When I look back at the record and listen to it, I can sort of see where I was at when I was making it - these brief little moments, different places I was at emotionally.
There are a couple of projects that are sort of on the plate; I haven't closed any of them yet. I'm trying to figure out which one is going to be the best one for me.
I don't know how you prepare for something like that. I cannot imagine living in a fishbowl like that. I don't live here so I don't know it will be that bad anyway because I live in Paris and we don't have that sort of phenomenon there. So I don't know, we'll see what happens.
The sort of thinking at the time was, 'Well, we're giving you access to medical care which you wouldn't otherwise be able to get, so your payment is that we get to use you in research.'
But I started it when I was going through a transitional time in my life. At the end of it, it really sort of symbolized it. I had made room to change, and room to grow. I recorded it in a little room.
The License Raj in India was a time when, to set up an industry, you needed a license. Which made the government an omnipresent and sort of all-pervasive authority.
My dad worked all sorts of jobs when I was growing up and finally ended up as a surveyor; my mum delivers meals to old folk around where we live. We didn't have much money when I was growing up, but I had a very happy childhood.
Technically, the last number of years, partially from the injury, it's been difficult to push forward but I felt even before the injury that I still could do more and was sort of at a stalemate.
I'd retired for about six or seven years. Coming back to the business, I found that I was sort of not quite a has-been, and it wasn't a new career, it was just kind of difficult to crack the nut, so to speak.
After I changed the string we picked up right where we left off - and punched back in at the same time. I don't know if this has ever been done before. The engineer sort of looked at us weird, but we got it on the first take.
After this interview, I'm going to immigration to try to sort out my Green Card, just like any other normal person.
The joy for me of television is the sort of family feeling of being involved with an ensemble - the cast and the crew and the director of photography and the guys in the camera truck - and you're all coming together. There's a great feeling when that is a successful unit, a successful family.
Sometimes, I seem to be only able to actually move and get going with things on the razor edge of possibly still managing whatever it is I'm supposed to do. I think, secretly, I might even get a buzz out of it. Maybe I crave the adrenalin like some sort of crazy gambler high on risking everything on the turn of a card.
You get the initial script, and then things sort of change here and there, but the whole thing is this sort of mushy collaboration, which I love.
If you're going to use standards as criteria for signing musicians, you can sign thousands. If you're going to use some sort of conceptual interpretation that's based on the tradition of those standards, but is trying to move away from it, you're down to about 10 people or so.
It is, we wanted to make a record that reflected our love of Hard-Rock music and it is sort of Metal though we don't really describe ourselves as Metal.
When I grew up we had gym at school, two or three dance classes after school, ice skating lessons, and all sorts of sports at our finger tips. We weren't glued to computers because they didn't exist, so being active was all we knew.
There has always been interest in certain phases and aspects of history - military history is a perennial bestseller, the Civil War, that sort of thing. But I think that there is a lot of interest in historical biography and what's generally called narrative history: history as story-telling.
Some people don't like long bus rides, but I love them. There's sort of a sense of solitude.
You sort of start thinking anything's possible if you've got enough nerve.
I missed my father so much when he died that writing about his life and mine was a way of bringing him back to life and getting me to sort of understand more about him and what made him the father, the husband and the man that he was, and how that made me the man, husband and father that I am.
My father is a college professor and that's about the extent of my college experience. I'm sort of a professional student forever. I think just as human beings we always have a student who is alive in us and is waiting to pop up and make us feel like we are 16 years-old again.
I don't know, Y'know, I always wanted to be one of those cheerleader girls and I never was that, and I was never sort of cute and perky, and I always thought it was fun to be cute and perky, and those, I don't know what those girls are doing now.
It is a remarkably easy thing to do, pointing out the faults of others and suggesting remedies or courses of action in an argumentative and pedantic sort of way, and I am still amazed that there are many people in the American media who are paid very big money to do this.
