What I'm after is a composed music that will sound like improvised music when improvisors play it. You shouldn't be able to tell what parts are being improvised and what parts were written out beforehand; it should sound like the same music.
As a young kid, I had a great background. My grandfather was a minister; I have two uncles that were ministers, and so I had that spiritual background. I accepted Christ early as a kid.
Men and women were declared equal one morning and everybody could divorce each other by postcard.
Understanding who you are is saying, 'You're great; you have tons of confidence, and don't ever forget that.' And that helped me, man. Because when things weren't going right, I thought, 'You've got to remember who you are. Don't stray from that. Don't let these things get you down.'
It's true that since 9/11, the application of conventional military rules of engagement has gotten a bit foggy. The Taliban were not an 'enemy state,' but the Canadian Forces conducted its operations in Afghanistan as though the rules of war applied anyway.
I was five years old; I got addicted to being on stage. I felt like it was the most wonderful place on Earth, performing in front of an audience, who in this case were a bunch of classmates, kids my age.
As a kid, looking at Michael Jackson, Marvin Gaye, New Edition, the Temptations, Motown, people who I felt were huge artists, they made me wanna do something.
I was a senior in high school, and my mom saw on the news at work that they were having an open call in New York, and she thought it's for a musical, and maybe we should go and just sort of chalk it up to a new experience... And so, we did. We went.
I've always been a little bit more of a novel reader than a short story reader. I think the first books that made me want to be a writer were novels.
If there were more than one path to salvation then it would totally negate Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, his life, his teachings.
I was attracted to people who were funny because I wanted to be in that world.
There were 900 books on Washington when I began writing on him.
One of the first people that believed in me, the first person to invest in my talent, me and this guy used to argue all the time in the studio, but at the end of the day, we both realized that we were after the same goal, and that was to make great music. And I'm talking about Eazy-E.
I've heard other gay people say when they were growing up they felt 'foreign.' Growing up, I was able to label these feelings as: 'I'm a Protestant.' It wasn't until I left, I thought: 'Oh, those weren't Protestant feelings.'
I am the least intimidating person. I think I would have done better in my career if I were a little more intimidating. Even the maid who comes to work for me once a week has found out that she can just trample over me... I'm a Cancer! We are not ferocious people.
When me and my brother Eagle-Eye were kids, life was about hitting the road, getting on the bus. We loved it.
What people don't realize is that China papered over its last two credit bubbles, those in 1999 and 2004. The banks were never bailed out - they just exchanged their bad loans for questionable bonds from quasi-state organizations.
The unemployment rate went down as I was governor of Massachusetts. We were losing jobs every month when I came into the state.
Upon graduation, I hit a wall. All of my good friends from UCLA were taking on jobs they were passionate about, and I felt left behind. It took a bit of soul searching, but in the end, I finally had the guts to pursue acting.
Eighteen fifty-eight was a year of great technological advancement in the West. That was the year when Queen Victoria was able, for the first time, to communicate with President Buchanan, through the Transatlantic Telegraphic Cable. And they were the first to 'Twitter' transatlantically.
I was taught nothing about the suffragettes in school. The version I eventually got was mainly about the peaceful campaigning of the constitutional suffragists. Their work was vital, but there was this other, not widely known story of the women who risked everything, who were prepared to break every taboo.
When I became a film-maker, all my favourite films, they weren't comedies.
When I was in the business as a young performer, it was a recognised fact that when you got to 60 you were out, because there'd be a new crop of comics coming up all the time, every 10 years or so.
In TV, I did scripts that were not well-written, and I learned how to make bad material okay. That's a hard thing to do; you can learn bad habits, but you can also learn to find something in anything.
I don't think I'm leading lady material, and I was always the wrong shape. I was never tall enough. But it was more lack of confidence. I shunned doing straight parts. I didn't think I was a good enough actress, so I thought I might as well do something they were supposed to laugh at.
I spent a lot of time behind the Iron Curtain, and their cars were abysmal.
I was seeing a lot of entrepreneurs who were effectively working on the next photo-sharing app. I wanted to inspire them to go much bigger, bolder and more significant than that.
The media's image of us is as animals, and we were never that to me. I knew love from black folks.
I started playing street hockey, but there were tennis courts near my house, and it was my father who suggested I try. I don't really know why.
The goatherds were the poorest people of Spain. Probably, they were the richest.
America before the 1960s was a pretty innocent place. We were the Lone Ranger galloping off to the rescue of the needy and the oppressed of the world, and we could get things done.
My best friend Jerry started a boat-washing business, and it was one of the most critical experiences of my life. I got to meet a lot of people who were entrepreneurs. My parents were schoolteachers, and I was now meeting people who owned companies. I realized that if this guy can do it, why can't I?
My father was very methodical about life. He'd always ask me, 'Now, what's your system? What's your schedule like?' I have no big system, no rigid schedule. When he would ask, 'How do you do this? Give it to me step by step,' I'd try to convince him that there were no step-by-steps.
I've been a Yankees fan for a long time. When I was a kid in the mid-'70s, the Yankees were really great. They had Reggie Jackson in '77. I was 8 years old at the time. He hit three home runs to win the World Series in game six against the Dodgers, and I was just hooked.
When I was growing up, I saw the Aaliyah shirts, the DMX shirts, or the collab shirts with DMX and Aaliyah when they had a single together. Those were the dope collage shirts with their faces all over it. They were doing cool things like that.
I write a story as if it were a letter to someone and essentially, that's what you do.
