Every time I want to impress someone about samples and hip-hop, I play 'Portrait of Tracy.' It's one of the greatest bass players ever doing a whole composition with only the two harmonics of electric bass; then a three-second loop in it became every...
I spent a weekend in the White House with President Clinton, back in '99, I guess. We played golf and just hung out and talked on many subjects. I saw him several times subsequently in L.A. He's the smartest man I ever met, a great politician. Everyb...
At least three times a week, I am overwhelmed with a wave of gratitude to New York City for providing me with a life. Not that my life is so great, although I think it's pretty nifty: I don't mine coal; I get paid to write.
Don't get me wrong. I don't take anything for granted. But it seems like the better I play, the more attention I get. And I can't get away from it. You play great, you get attention. But I hate attention. It is weird. I'm in a bind. The more you win,...
I locate a great deal of the power of Occupy Wall Street in the name itself, 'Occupy Wall Street,' or '#OccupyWallStreet.' It works because the name contains everything you need to know: the tactic and the target. The name is also modular. You can cr...
I spent so many years of my life as a stage actor and when you do all these plays, a lot of really great plays are very politically driven. They deal with deep social issues, and that's the kind of stuff that I love, as an audience member.
When I was 16, I played Macbeth at school and my English teacher said, 'I think you may have acting talent. Try to get into the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain and see where you get.' I wouldn't have thought of that at all. I wanted to be a s...
A man came up to me at a party and asked if I wanted to be in his video game. I of course said yes. And then it turned out it was 'Assassin's Creed', so that was great. They let me ad lib a lot and mess about and be very snarky indeed, and I'm thrill...
I haven't seen it this busy since I've been an IndyCar driver. So I think that's a great kind of thing that's happening for the IndyCar Series, in general, right now. But it's an event that I'm very proud to be part of. I love it. I can't wait to com...
And I found out, the other part of it is that I found out and in my desire to life successfully, that baseball fit very well into my life. It's been a great teacher, trainer, mentor and you'll see what I mean in the next few minutes that I have to sp...
I think that great poetry is the most interesting and complex use of the poet's language at that point in history, and so it's even more exciting when you read a poet like Yeats, almost 100 years old now, and you think that perhaps no one can really ...
I ride my bike for transportation a great deal - occasionally I ride it for fun. But I also have a generator bike that's hooked up to my solar battery pack, so if I ride 15 minutes hard on my bike, that's enough energy to toast toast, or power my com...
I look upon The Animals, they were a great band initially, we left our mark, but thing was it was a band that couldn't live up to its name so I soldiered on. On one level, it was devastating for a while. On another level, maybe I should thank them fo...
I thought the Billie Holiday comparison was beautiful. I think, Wow, what a wonderful, creative, helpful spirit. She's someone who wanted to help others by sharing her emotion. That's what I do, too, so I think that's a great comparison.
You would think that if any group in America had 20% to 25% unemployment, it would generate all kinds of attention. The Labor Department would understandably and necessarily begin to concentrate on what can we do to reduce this level of unemployment....
My heart burnt within me with indignation and grief; we could think of nothing else. All night long we had only snatches of sleep, waking up perpetually to the sense of a great shock and grief. Every one is feeling the same. I never knew so universal...
While on top of Everest, I looked across the valley towards the great peak Makalu and mentally worked out a route about how it could be climbed. It showed me that even though I was standing on top of the world, it wasn't the end of everything. I was ...
I sit here as the first African-American attorney general, serving the first African-American President of the United States. And that has to show that we have made a great deal of progress. But there's still more we have to travel along this road so...
My earliest drawing is a supposed Carracci. It wasn't very expensive, I guess, because they don't know if it's a real Carracci. But it has all these seals on it of people who've owned it, and one of the great portrait painters of England, Reynolds, h...
While I was in London it was completely upside-down. I got a whole new life and it was a challenge to keep in touch with my life in Ireland, but it was great fun. Now though, I've been back home since November and gradually all connections with my HP...
Mike Leigh taught me about making choices - as an actor, you choose between being honest and clever, and with Mike, it's always about being honest. I learned how to behave on a film set from Jim Broadbent. He was a great example of someone with a fan...
