When I got to New York City when I was 18, I started playing in clubs in Brooklyn - I have good friends and devoted fans on the underground scene, but we were playing for each other at that point - and that was it.
I was pretty much prepared because I was already playing in extremely good ways when I arrived from Europe because I played jazz four or five years before I arrived here.
If you let the plot be determined by what you feel is in the character's mind at that point, it may not turn out to be a very good play, but at least it will be a play where people are behaving in a kind of truthful way.
The thing is, it's not good anyway for eight-year-olds to be out there playing tennis tournaments so soon in their lives. But when I did get to play in a tournament, when I was nine, I was overjoyed.
I would love to play 'Funny Girl' or 'Evita,' but I idolize the women who have played those parts. I don't know if there needs to be another version of those shows.
It's funny when you know you're playing two characters and you're aware of how you have to play each one into your performance of the other. You're constantly at the back of your mind thinking and it all gets a bit confusing.
Whether the angels play only Bach praising God, I am not quite sure. I am sure, however, that en famille they play Mozart.
Unless you're flat out dead, you have to think of some other questions like: what's on the other side? It brings up issues of God, or no God. How does he play into this? Or he, or she, or it? How does it all play into this?
Why do we have a brain in the first place? Not to write books, articles, or plays; not to do science or play music. Brains develop because they are an expedient way of managing life in a body.
I've never taken a lesson in my life, and I can play every instrument there is. I play by ear, but I can fool anybody into thinking I went to some conservatory of music.
I know I get a real kick, an emotional charge, out of playing a song I haven't played for 10 years. It just takes you back to that point in your life.
As an actor, it's a very strange adjustment to start playing the father. I was used to playing a kid my whole life, and then all of a sudden, it's like, boom. I guess when I let my hair go grey, things changed.
I had been playing since I was 2 years old, never remembering a life without music, always playing everything naturally and mostly by ear, and all the grownups wanted were more scales and drudgery out of me.
The most interesting guy I've ever played with was King Hassan of Morocco. I went over there on a trip in the early 1970s, and the King and I played five holes. I've never been that nervous in my life.
My first game, I played the first play of the game and called a timeout and got sat down, got benched for the rest of the game, and we won the game. It was the longest day of my life. Long day. Very embarrassing.
It's still a trip for me to see somebody that I've only seen on television or in a movie. When they are there in real life, it's very different. When we played Detroit, Kevin Costner played before us.
In India, there's a way of seeing life as a cosmic play. It's called Lila. I can watch my life, and I can see my guru playing with me.
I've played a lot of cops and a lot of bad guys, so I would like to play a regular person and just live a regular life with something interesting about it. I love the idea of television and kind of infiltrating that.
High school and college were my punk, formative years. I was playing hardcore, learning to be a musician. In bands, you tour, but you're paid nothing; you're playing to 50 people in a basement, sleeping in a van, and you love it.
I love the immediacy of those old analog machines; it's really inspiring. You just set them up to play, and they go, playing the same thing until you switch the pattern.
I love my fans in Philadelphia, but this is the hardest place in the world to play in. And I think it's the hardest place to play in to be a superstar. Just to be the No. 1 guy. All eyes on you - because everybody wants you to be perfect, but not the...
