The day I entered St Columb's College, my parents bought me a Conway Stewart pen. It was a special afternoon, of course. We were going to be parting that evening; they were aware of it, I was aware of it, nothing much was said about it.
I'm in college at North Carolina State University. I'm about to start my sophomore year and have an apartment on campus with three buddies I've grown up with. I get to be normal when I'm there, and then I tour Thursday through Sunday.
College athletics are so entrenched and enjoyed by so many people that they will never be discontinued or substantially changed. I know that. I just pity the people caught in that tender trap. And most of all, I pity those kids.
I remember passing through New York in college and thinking, 'I'm going to come back here.' The energy just made me think of Europe - everyone walking, seeing the delis and flowers outside. It just felt very familiar. I loved it right away.
When I got to college, I used to run on top of everything else, because when you gain weight in swimming, you have to do something else, like bike or run, to maintain the weight or take the weight off.
Even as a college professor at Carnegie Mellon and Stanford, I saw myself as an entrepreneur, and I went out, took risks, and tried to invent new things, such as participating in the DARPA Grand Challenge and working on self-driving cars.
I did some plays in high school. Yes. Never took it that seriously. My parents, however, wanted me to go to college. My grades weren't exactly spectacular so they figured acting might be a necessary back door into some school.
I tried out for another show while I was in college so I could pay off my student loans, and it sort of led to The Real World. The same people that were casting that show were casting The Real World, so they asked me to do it.
And then it was like, wait, you can go to college and study theater? And act in plays? This is almost a racket, you know. And then when the opportunity came along to do it professionally, I thought I'd won the lottery.
When I grew up I always wanted to act. Also, I wanted to be either a lawyer or a doctor. However, when I got to college and realized what those occupations entailed, I changed my mind real quick.
Well, when I was younger, in high school, I started out smoking pot. Which escalated into taking acid on a regular basis, which escalated into selling acid. And then I started, when I went to college, I started doing opiates.
I did have a falsetto, but I only used it when I was joking around with friends or to annoy my girlfriends, or in the shower, because no one else was around. Or in college. I'd go to karaoke bars and sing Tina Turner songs in the original key.
I created lots of characters in high school and college, and the first character I created in pro comics was Liana, Green Lantern of M'Elu, for a backup story in 'Green Lantern #162,' my first professional sale.
I've always enjoyed drinking wine, ever since I was in college. My appreciation really took off when I began to visit Napa. I was toying with an idea of making wine in Napa, but it's prohibitively expensive, and the competition is fierce.
My mother said I must always be intolerant of ignorance but understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to school, were more intelligent and more educated than college professors.
I think sometimes you just need to play in this league. As a rookie coming out of college, you don't understand the real significance of being a pro unless you're playing other pros. It doesn't help you to play sporadically here or there.
Do you realize that if we could increase just by 50 percent the number of adults who have a college degree, it would add $5 billion to the economy and it would result in a net income to the state of Arkansas of $340 million a year?
I have a lot of brothers and sisters, and each movie has helped pay for tuition. And then I was like, I only have one left in college, so why am I doing this? But now I want to go back to Italy and live on a farm in Tuscany.
When I was in college, my parents' house burned down, and took a lot of the possessions I'd grown up with. That's probably one thing that made me realize material stuff is not really that important.
I thought I would set the world on fire when I got out of college. I had done quite well in a field that was growing. Unfortunately, we got hit with a recession in 1981.
I think if I were a college professor, no one would say I was uncomfortable about being shy because that might be expected. But I think because of people's stereotypes, they think of a football player as someone who is very outgoing and I'm not.
