I've never been able to sit round on my own and play drums, practice in the back room, never been able to. I've always played with other musicians. It's how I play, there's no joy for me in playing on my own, bashing away. I need a bass, a piano, guitar, whatever, and then I can play.
I remember a distinct moment when it was my junior year of college, and the content I was making was changing and not really myself, and I tried to switch back to just putting me out there. I'm happy that happened really early in my career, because that was before I started doing podcasts or writing.
What we do now is to be valued - but we need to do more, so that it's more exciting to other people, and therefore that excitement shines back on us and we're able to have the energy to do more, to widen our creativity.
I guess coming after 'Country Grammar' and everybody thinking, 'Well maybe, that was it.' To come back with something like 'Nellyville' and to have people accept it and appreciate it the way they did, that was a great move.
Through the 1980s and '90s, evangelicals sought to turn back the forces of secularization. Groups like the Moral Majority and the Christian Coalition pressed for laws recognizing Christianity's unique place in American life, including laws that would allow prayer in public schools and Christian displays in public places.
When I went back to England after a year away, the country seemed stuck, dozing in a fairy tale, stifled by the weight of tradition.
If you go back and watch the original 'V,' you're like, 'Oh, I thought this was great. It kind of looks really cheesy.'
Because travel has always been such a vital part of myself and so essential to who I am, I have made the decision to continue to put myself back out into the world. And that's not an easy decision to make.
I've taken Saturdays to be the day I pull back completely. I do things that are more creative, and I've actually found that helps me when I get back into work to be more thoughtful, and I truly believe that feeding your creative soul is really important to being more analytical.
There's a book called 'The Shack' - it had a lot to do with me coming full circle, meeting my birth mother. Awhile back, my birth mom and my adopted mom came to my show together, and it was pretty surreal.
The money to fund great things and innovations and programs is gone in our lifetime; it's all gone to debt. So we won't be able to solve global warming or have the transportation that we needed for the 21st century. We should be supporting people with great ideas, but it's gone, and now it's gotta be paid back with interest to banks in China.
Yoga reduced my stress and bodily tension. It allowed me to bring my body back into balance, to emerge from my fertility struggle with my sense of self esteem and self worth intact, and to forge a stronger bond with my husband.
A logic proof is: you get a starting point and an ending point, and you have to get there through all these different steps and tautologies. I approach novel writing that way. When I get to the end I have to go back and connect everything.
Social life was different for me in college. I didn't go to as many parties as my friends did. I didn't join a sorority because I knew I couldn't make a long-term commitment. I was constantly traveling back and forth from Silicon Valley to Austin for internships. It was hard, but it was worth it for where I wanted to go.
I really just love to read, period, whether it be books or magazines or the back of the cereal box. It's the one thing I can always count on to calm me down, take me away and inspire me, all at once.
I definitely do live my life at a different pace now than I used to... I feel like I'm guilty of all the overindulgences of a guy in his 20s and early 30s could've gone through, but I look back on it with great fondness. I don't have a lot of regrets.
Any real virtual reality enthusiast can look back at VR science fiction. It's not about playing games... 'The Matrix,' 'Snow Crash,' all this fiction was not about sitting in a room playing video games. It's about being in a parallel digital world that exists alongside our own, communicating with other people, playing with other people.
I'm a believer, but an unsettled one. I think it has something to do with the fact that my grandmother always told me she would come back and tickle my feet at night time when she passed away. She hasn't gotten me yet. But I keep the blanket over my feet at night, no matter how hot it is.
I'm a really big advocate of ethical fashion. I actually have a travelling boutique called Maison de Mode, which is all about ethical fashion. I also like Maiyet from Paris. They're very Celine-esque in their silhouettes. I love their back story, too: they work with orphans in Colombia and India.
It's been a process of evolving within a family company to get the autonomy I now have from a boss like my father. If you're sitting there waiting for a pat on the back, you're going to be waiting a long time.
Looking back at my high school years, I'm struck by how slowly history can move.
My first pictures are from 1972, and my first proper camera dates back to 1973. During the first year I used my father's camera. It had a flash on it, which I don't like, but I didn't know anything about photography back then, so it was just what I did.
For me, it always comes back to the blogger, the author, the designer, the developer. You build software for that core individual person, and then smart organisations adopt it and dumb organisations die.
'Metal Gear Solid' is, for the most part, an infiltration game. You go somewhere, you execute your mission, then you go back. Those are your actions as the player.
My own mother, my sister and nearly all the women in my family had full-time jobs as mothers. They were wonderful at it. They drove their children back and forth to soccer, skating lessons, piano lessons, private schools, but I sensed, even in my own mother, a kind of distant dissatisfaction.
When China fails to live up to its obligations, we push back - sort of. We accept arguments from Chinese leaders that they are a developing country that needs time to reform.
My mom was an actress, so I got with her boutique agency back in 2001 and started booking a few commercials. She's like my co-manager.
I would love to go help baby sea turtles back into the ocean after hatching in Mexico.
I understand what's expected of me. I understand the lineage for the running back position of the Dallas Cowboys.
I always believe that my greatest audience will come from 70-year-old Jewish men and Jewish women, but that's me from my experience of going to High Holiday services and being adored by the women with free candy in the back.
You know, I've had blowups with my coach too. The same thing happens, it just wasn't as evident back then because they didn't have so many cameras and ways to see things happen.
To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring - it was peace.
I met my husband Itzik when I got back home to Israel from Oxford in 2002. He is my Internet-of-all-Things.
Coming back to America to pursue music is a dream.
I love getting back to Wivenhoe. I get out of my wig, bustle and costume in three minutes flat at the end of the play before jumping into a taxi outside the theater and catching the train home.
I had the sense when I looked back over my life I would actually see a mess of decisions, a few of which I had thought about, some of which I had sort of stumbled on and many that I had no control over whatsoever.
