I moved to New York - I attended NYU, did a BFA in Acting at NYU. I was really into hip-hop, so I started battling, like '8 Mile.' I used to rap battle.
I'm actually from Mt. Kisco, New York, which is in Westchester County, and when I auditioned for 'Dukes,' I told them I was from Snailville, Georgia, which doesn't exist, and I'd just graduated first in my class from the Georgia School of High Performance Driving, which also doesn't exist. But they bought it.
I kept extensions in until I finished high school. Although, once I got to college, that's when it all started to shift. I think it was just growing up and moving to New York, where I saw so many different people, vibes, and looks, and everyone really owned it. That led me to feel more free, take more risks, and go back into my natural hair.
My heroes were people like Jim Jarmusch. Scorsese was my god. Spike Lee was exciting, doing exactly what we thought we were going to do: personal movies based in, and about, New York. My heroes were all participating in an economic model that was collapsing as I was finishing film school.
A lawsuit with no legal precedent, seeking no damages, from no jury, in the name of stopping something that isn't happening? Only in New York.
I never really thought of my neighborhood in South Philly as being a neighborhood; it was more a state of mind. For people who aren't familiar with those kinds of places, it's a whole different thing. Like, 42nd Street in New York City is a state of mind.
If the plane lost all my luggage, and I was somewhere sunny like Ibiza, I would just get a bikini, shorts, T-shirt, and sandals. If it was somewhere colder like New York, I'd go for jeans, jacket, and a pair of Louboutins.
Growing up in New York, I was sort of shocked when I realized that my children are Californians. They are 14 years old, and I explain to them frequently that they will never realize the glory of a snow day. You wake up and the world says, 'Oops, it's too much fun to go to school, you've got to stay home and deal with the snow!'
New York has always embraced me.
Playing in New York is special to me because you are surrounded by so many communities and a strong Latin community, including the Washington Heights neighborhood. I come to Washington Heights for real Dominican food that reminds me of my hometown, and it's a great place to visit.
I was a huge Bowie fan since I was 12 years old. That was the first 'punk' rock I got into in the Seventies. I didn't find out about a lot of the other stuff that was going on, like New York Dolls and Roxy Music, until a lot later.
In New York, working at the foundry, I was making these little figures. I desperately would like to make big figures, but I just can't do it; my hands don't do it. We were talking about making bronze plinths, and then we made one, a square one. I wrote on it, then I put a little figure on top, and it just looked really good. It worked.
I think I got disappointed over the years about New York, about the States. You know, sometimes you go and visit Europe and see good old socialism in its good part! You see public concern about art, and young people's participation and young faces in the audience.
All through my twenties, I lived in very walkable cities - Philadelphia, San Francisco, and New York.
New York and Dublin are now suburbs of each other.
I think it's really important to realize that small businesses are often the portal for immigrants into the New York City economy. I think we have something like 40,000 small businesses that are immigrant-run in New York.
What is New York? A straightforward answer: seven million people crushed onto an island originally settled by the Dutch. But it's more than that. These are seven million who were, mainly, not even born here.
I love New York. It's my favorite city in the world.
I said to myself I've got to go up there and do it because the New York Mets keep winning every day. The game was on the line and I wanted to go out there and come through for my team. That win tonight means a lot for us.
I definitely had to do some soul searching, and there would be a lot of times where I would sit back and look at the Internet and say to myself, 'This is a way of being able to communicate with all my fans all over the world, other than just being in New York and only hearing the New York side of things.'
The kinetic quality of New York, the kids, dirt, madness - I tried to find a photographic style that would come close to it. So I cropped, blurred, played with the negatives.
My father, naturally, spoiled me when I was allowed to see him - flying to New York from Washington, alone, in those terrifying planes. He'd take me to Danny Kaye movies and rent a dog for me to walk in the park on Sunday - a different dog every Sunday - and then to have butterscotch sundaes with almonds at Schrafft's.
I grew up in Belle Harbor, which is in New York City, but it has the most powerful sense of nature and seasons. It wasn't even the beach and the water. I just dreamt about everything that had to do with nature. I read about Thoreau.
Los Angeles for many years had operated with a police department that was far smaller than other police departments had in areas of comparable or larger size, New York and Chicago being the most obvious examples.
I was born on the other side of the tracks, in public housing in Brooklyn, New York. My dad never made more than $20,000 a year, and I grew up in a family that lost health insurance. So I was scarred at a young age with understanding what it was like to watch my parents lose access to the American dream.
I really feel that New York City is the greatest city in the world.
Right here in New York, people are struggling in working conditions not much safer or fairer than the sweatshops of 1911.
When I first moved to New York, I wanted to be a dancer. I danced professionally for years, living a hand-to-mouth existence. I never tapped into nightlife; all I knew was dancers. We went to bed early and got up early and went to free concerts at the Lincoln Center and Shakespeare in the Park.
Nothing changes and very little happens in Paris. This is a great place to work without distraction - and then I run away to New York, where I have a life!
When I first played New York, it was with James Brown at the Apollo, and I was playing in a band under the name The Valentinos. I remember Sam Cooke saying, 'I want you to go in there with James Brown. I couldn't be as hard on you as James Brown would be.' But we came out marching like soldiers.
I love London; I could totally live here, actually. I'm in New York most of the time, and it really reminds me a lot of New York.
I moved to L.A. after my landlord in Brooklyn tripled my rent. I spent months looking for other places to move to in New York, then one day I was in California eating a grapefruit, and I was like, 'This is what they taste like?' So I decided to move to L.A. and build a studio in my house.
In New York, FEMA granted the Mamaroneck Beach & Yacht Club's request to be remapped from the high-risk flood zone in August 2012 - just two months before the club was damaged and its outbuildings destroyed by Hurricane Sandy, which stacked up yachts at its docks like pick-up sticks.
To write a story about New York that only deals with people in your age and socioeconomic bracket, that feels dishonest to me. So much of New York comes from everyone bumping into each other.
I had to figure out how to survive in New York, and most of my time was occupied in getting an apartment and getting money. A lot of older jazz guys looked out for me and found me gigs and places to stay.
For a writer, New York works well. Literary work is very elitist. I worked two hours a day, maximum, and the time after that was very agreeable. I walked a lot with pleasure. Those two hours augmented the day. I wrote more here than in Paris, an entire chapter of a new novel.
