There is something about New York City that in and of itself is so theatrical hat I use to think... I use to feel when I walked out of my apartment on the way to school or anywhere that I was walking out on stage.
I always enjoyed writing. I did playlets in high school, I did radio shows in college. That's one of the reasons I went down to Second City, because you could do acting and writing.
There were so many specific things from high school jazz band that I remembered: the conductor searching out people who were out of tune, or stopping and starting me for hours in front of the band as they watched.
So at 16 I got a job at the local radio station. And I was working after school and weekends. I did the news; I did everything. I did - played records.
The idea of 'Voice of Witness' is to let survivors and witnesses of human-rights abuses tell their story at length. It started with a course that I co-taught at U.C. Berkeley journalism school back in 2003.
We've been doing this here since 1968, so we have been identified as an example of a free, democratic school, and many professors want to expose their students to our philosophy.
I wouldn't say I was bullied per se, but I did get a lot of unwanted attention because I was musical and stood out. In school you don't want to stand out; you want to blend in.
I like school very much, and I'll go to college if my career slows down. But kids go to college to be where I am today. Not to put college down, but for me, it would be digressing.
I've done so much different stuff, people kinda go, 'Do you live in Islington?' 'Did you used to go to so and so school?' And when I say I'm an actor, they don't believe me!
I went to a theater arts school, so I'm interested in many different projects, whether it be film, television or even live theater. I'm a performer. That's what I do. That's what I want to do.
At 10, I heard Neil Diamond's 'Solitary Man' and it moved me so deeply I stood, frozen in place during school recess, feeling such empathy for the narrator in Diamond's masterpiece that my heart was smashed.
School is learning things you don't want to know, surrounded by people you wish you didn't know, while working toward a future you don't know will ever come.
When I met David Green at film school he always used to offer free haircuts - he was kind of an artisan. In a lot of our films, he's constantly trying to give me weird looks.
I don't have problems starting writing. I have problems stopping. I'm one of the last dads to arrive at school to collect the kids, because I want to get this paragraph just right.
We all have an opportunity and responsibility to create a legacy. A legacy which is resilient, sustainable and authentic." - Jim Cookson, Doctoral Student, Ashridge Business School, UK, August 2014
What we're learning in our schools is not the wisdom of life. We're learning technologies, we're getting information. There's a curious reluctance on the part of faculties to indicate the life values of their subjects.
Still today, I cannot cross the threshold of a teaching institution without physical symptoms, in my chest and my stomach, of discomfort or anxiety. And yet I have never left school.
People would say, Can we develop a sitcom around you? and I would say, Not interested. I'm very happy doing standup and writing and taking my kids to school.
We just moved out of L.A. because I didn't want to be raising my girls in the city. They're in public school now and they're in a normal situation. We're sort of settling into that. It's just a choice.
I urge you to examine in your own mind the assumptions which must lay behind using the police power to insist that once-sovereign spirits have no choice but to submit to being schooled by strangers.
School is about learning to wait your turn, however long it takes to come, if ever. And how to submit with a show of enthusiasm to the judgment of strangers, even if they are wrong, even if your enthusiasm is phony.
