I remember being a little kid sitting in the living room with my brother and some friends from around the neighborhood, and I would sit at the piano and as they were running around the room doing different things and being silly, acting out, I would actually play the score for it - the music that went along with it.
In the past, TSR and now Wizards of the Coast have asked me to do game stats for my characters, and I'm never comfortable doing that. It's all relative after all.
I definitely enjoy my time by myself - and that's kind of the weird thing about touring; you're kind of constantly surrounded by people - but I actually do enjoy going out and doing things and being around people.
I don't do anything on stage that allows me to become a trained seal, where you're just doing the same thing over and over.
Musicals have clearly gotten more physical. You never saw Ethel Merman doing step aerobics.
When I got to college, I was intending to study film. But I found that my brain was feeling mushy, so I took a few math classes. I started doing really well at them, and solving equations was this, like, drug rush.
Even the pictures I was doing at college - a little narrative based on a butterfly catcher, or a chimney sweep - the images were always telling stories. They were all scenarios and moods which I storyboarded and worked through - it's exactly what I do now.
The most exciting thing is not doing it. If you fall in love with someone and never do it, it's much more exciting.
There is a lot of pressure on pop stars, and I think a lot of it is the pressure that we put on ourselves. In our minds, we build up these huge, huge standards that we think people want from us, and actually, when you break it down, people just want you to make music and perform to the best of your ability, but anxiety can stop you from doing that.
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.
I do remember doing shows strictly in black and white, too, so you're right.
You're a sovereign as a citizen. If you're not involved in your government, you're not doing your job. In the long run that's very bad for the Republic.
My favorite thing about being famous... it's not really as big of a deal as everybody says it is. Being on the road is tough, doing interviews, and all the stuff. It's still pretty tough.
Exploring is one of my favorite things to do, but I don't really want to be in a tour group. I like doing it alone or with whomever I'm traveling with.
Talking isn't doing. It is a kind of good deed to say well; and yet words are not deeds.
People stopped hanging out with me at the point when I stopped doing drugs. All of a sudden they didn't wanna hang out with me anymore. And I would have hung out with them. I mean they were killing themselves, but I still would have hung out with them.
But the question is a matter of the survival and the teaching. That's what our work comes down to. No matter where we key into it, it's the same work, just different pieces of ourselves doing it.
The biggest compliment to me is that guys really approach me and they have a connection with me, so there must be something I'm doing that is authentic, otherwise they wouldn't connect with me so strongly. It's a real compliment.
If I'm doing something in fashion, I will try to respect the 'laws' of the business, but I will try to keep my integrity and my respect for the designers and for my readers.
It is not the straining for great things that is most effective; it is the doing the little things, the common duties, a little better and better.
The worst thing is to get involved with people who aren't passionate about what they're doing.
I like to think that images of people doing amazing things may open people's eyes to the human potential, to the idea that people can do the extraordinary when they set their minds to it.
I'm meeting people I never would have met at Brown and doing things I couldn't do because of basketball.
I feel that the greatest reward for doing is the opportunity to do more.
I think it better to do right, even if we suffer in so doing, than to incur the reproach of our consciences and posterity.
Every day, you get up, and the world is changing; your customers are expecting more from you. Your competitors are putting pressure on you by doing more and trying to beat you here and beat you there.
I've been doing Shakespeare readings with my friends for years.
I don't think I have a demographic. I was at Comic-Con in San Diego recently, and I was doing a signing, and my line was all military guys, young girls, housewives and guys in wheelchairs. There was just everybody all over the place.
My theory is that if you look confident you can pull off anything - even if you have no clue what you're doing.
Something like reading depends a lot on just having people around you who talk to you and read you books, more than sitting down and, say, doing a reading drill when you're 3 or 4 years old.
I started off first doing a TV series called 'Boston Common.' That was my first big job, and then I went on to do another half hour comedy show, and that was with Tom Arnold, called 'The Tom Show.'
There's nothing more nourishing to the spirit than doing what you feel called to do.
Just with the basic one guitar, one piano and one vocal and an audience, I think that the intimacy comes through more. People feel much more connected to the song because there's nothing in the way, and I actually enjoy doing that.
If people are talking about me, I want it to be because of the work I'm doing and not the person I'm seeing.
It's kind of not about the quality of the art, as much as this is what I love doing and I'd have a worse time doing anything else. That's kind of as far as I think in terms of philosophy.
When you're working with a big star, you always wonder what it's going to be like. Hugh Jackman puts you at ease within 10 minutes. He has such a wonderful energy and is so generous when you're doing a scene. He's just so funny and friendly and playful - he instantly becomes your friend.
