For the last 30-plus years, I have been doing one long, uninterrupted improv.
I love the idea of the amateur - that's what popular culture is all about. But what the Internet's doing is professionalizing everyone's amateuristic impulses.
I think I've always wanted to be different from everybody else. I get really annoyed when I do something and everybody else does it too, or if I'm doing something that everybody else is doing.
If I spent my time wondering about what genre I wanted to be in or where I was on the charts, I wouldn't be able to write these kinds of song. I'd be too busy doing other things.
I think that artists, at a certain point, can either become defiant and say that the audience is wrong, readers don't get them, and they're going to keep doing it their own way, or they can listen to the criticism - and not necessarily blindly follow the audience's requests and advice.
If I'm doing an olive oil tasting, I would do a very lean bread: an Italian style or pita bread. You want the flavor of the oil to shine; you don't want the bread or anything else to mask it.
The central task for a business is to make a profit. The challenge is to make a profit by doing things which are genuinely good for people and good for societies.
Having gone through what I went through, watching my family be torn to shreds and my children suffer immensely, I can't be the agent of doing that to someone else. I can't be the agent of causing someone to go to prison.
Everybody can relate to that feeling that, 'I'm having one of those days where I'm not doing anything right.'
I encourage everyone to become their dream. Most young people get sidetracked and never end up doing what they really set out to do.
My mom ending up passing away, and I got really depressed and didn't have money for therapy, and so I started doing standup to cope with my mom's death.
What I love about doing live theater and the same material night after night is... you can live inside the same words. There comes a great joy in that, in making it so clear because you've had the time to define it.
There is just as much evil in all of us as there is good. We're all continuously guilty, even if we're not doing it intentionally to be evil. Here we are sitting in luxury hotels, living it up on the the backs of others in the third world. We all have a guilty conscience, but we do very little about it.
I like doing the editorial stuff because it's nice to do something that's more me. But modeling for brands and the things to make money... I guess I don't really like being the mannequin. It's a very strange concept.
I feel like, as a person of color, I've always been kind of doing the work against the tide.
I'm not doing no more 'Flavor of Loves.' I'm trying to grow. I don't want to stay on the same page. You can't stay on the same page in order to get to the next chap.
I'm doing it, I took responsibility in my country and I've done it with my bare hands.
'SCTV' was the concept of a group ensemble doing satirical things. 'Saturday Night Live's sketches were broader than ours, more universal.
I started out doing theater in N.Y.C.
It's nice to invest yourself fully in whatever you're doing... I think it's best to try and give everything you've got; otherwise, what's the point?
I've been doing a lot of work on female rights, especially adolescent rights. I've been to a lot of schools where the UNICEF had set up villages in India, and it's an eye-opening experience.
My dad was pretty strict. We didn't even get to watch any of his movies until I was, like, 17 years old. I didn't even see his stand-up, really, until I started doing stand-up, and that was when I was 22. So he's pretty strict. We had curfews until I was 17... he didn't play around.
You can work really hard and well on something, and someone you respect might hate it; worse, they're not empirically wrong for doing so. This is scary, especially for people who haven't been published.
When I am in that lane, and I hear, 'Caster Semenya from South Africa,' I always know I am doing it for my people. They love and support me, and I will always do them proud; I will always put them first. Without them, I am nothing.
I wasn't planning on doing musicals, but that's how I started.
I think films about men are often about characters who don't want to express their feelings. You're supposed to kind of admire them for not expressing their feelings. And I feel that's a bit dull. Women's stories often have stronger emotional content, which I enjoy doing. What I really love doing is mixing that with humor.
If a player's not doing the things he should, put him on the bench. He'll come around.
I feel like contemporary art is everywhere now and with the rise of the internet, it's so much easier to see what artists are doing and to follow their careers.
Acting is something that I really love when I am doing it, as it is interesting and fun to pretend to be someone else, but I don't ever miss it when I am not doing it.
In 'Taxi,' I kept doing the same scene for three years. I was underused.
I'm very interested in writing an actual series, that doesn't have too much to do with my music - a world I create that has characters in it. I'm just trying to get there by doing things that I want to do.
I am doing everything humanly possible to try and get well, but lately things have just kept getting worse.
You're playing for yourself. And if you're not playing for yourself, you're an entertainer, doing it for the crowd.
Anybody can act good to be around when they are doing really well.
People at different stages of their lives are doing different things, and they're all using Google.
I rarely stay at home when I'm in New York. I'm always doing things. It brings you so much energy.
