I couldn't do my show without spending 12 years on the streets of Humboldt Park. It made me a better interrogator. Still, if they had taken me out of my squad car and gave me a show, I would've been terrible. But on 'Springer,' the spotlight was on J...
I remember being, like, 5 years old, and my dad took me to a Yankees-Mets game. My dad had me on his shoulders and taught me one of the most important lessons about sports. He said, 'Jesse, just remember one thing, the Mets suck.'
When I first met Alan Parker, who directed 'Angel Heart,' he'd heard so many horror stories about me that he was literally scared to death of me. Right away, he sat me down and said, 'I'm very scared of you. I've heard you're a very bad boy.'
At the time it seriously troubled me, but in drafting me as Marshall Plan Administrator, President Truman did as great a favor for me as one man can do for another. It opened my eyes to many things of which I was totally unaware and it was the beginn...
The MFA program did one great thing for me: It taught me how to be a better reader and critic. Nothing I wrote during my time at Columbia remains - but learning how to really deconstruct a work of fiction - that, of course, is a permanent part of me ...
Things that make me laugh range from a wonderful stand-up like Jerry Seinfeld, Louis C.K. and Chris Rock to my son Gabe, who does great improv work. I also look backwards to the great comedic actors like Jackie Gleason, Paul Lynde and Phil Silvers.
For me, a good thriller must teach me something about the real world. Thrillers like 'Coma,' 'The Hunt for Red October' and 'The Firm' all captivated me by providing glimpses into realms about which I knew very little - medical science, submarine tec...
Golf is a game to me. Other players work extremely hard all year long. I work hard before Augusta. I know I get good results when I practice, but it also wears me out. It literally wore me out even when I was in my 20s.
I have always been the first on the dance floor. Before fame, people thought it made me a good laugh; now, people point and call me an attention seeker! I'm very aware of the way people can view me, but I'm very aware that I have to just enjoy my lif...
Whether we like it or not, we are high-profile athletes. We're role models. Kids come up to me all the time to talk and it makes me remember when I was a kid and I got to meet Jerry Rice and how much that meant to me. And how we've got to set a good ...
Creating emotion was what my career was all about. I wanted people to laugh at me; I wanted people to cry with me. I wanted people to feel good or to think about something when they watched me. I think that's why, even not being an Olympic champion, ...
A whole generation of people that didn't know me from 'SNL' recognize me from 'Weeds' now. People recognize me once in a while and appreciate the work. It gets a little embarrassing but it's good. If you work as an accountant, you don't have people c...
I always laugh the hardest at the stuff you see in day-to-day life. It's great when somebody can tell a joke that really makes you laugh hard, but to see some kind of personal interaction that no one could write is so good. Those are always the thing...
I think if people who are attacking me or against me, if they would just watch one of my films, they would - they may not agree with me politically on all the things I'm saying. But they will know at the end of the film that I love this country and t...
I'm not superstitious about good luck charms and all that. I don't have any ring or any tangible thing as a charm. But I like to have at least one of my parents with me during my shows. It gives me strength to find their faces... or my brothers... in...
I'm a romantic, but I'm not a romantic in the traditional sense. I like to romanticize what happens to me. Whatever happens to me - you could quantify it as good or bad - I romanticize it. I think along the lines of 'When that thing happened, it made...
Whenever somebody says they need an angle for their story I always fear that they've got an idea and they want me to fit into it or they want me to come up with an idea myself or I'm supposed to be more revealing than I've been, and to me it just sou...
I really feel like that concept of enjoying the now and not worrying about the future is what my coach has been trying to teach me for 14 years - and that is what has made me such a different athlete 10 years later, and that is what has made me stron...
The things that make me angry still make me angry. George Carlin is 67, and he's still as funny as he's ever been, and he's still angry. And that makes me feel good, because I feel like if I stick around long enough, I'll still be able to work.
The way I write my songs is that I have to believe what I'm writing about, and that's why they always end up being so personal - because the kind of artists I like, they convince me, they totally win me over straight away in that thing. Like, 'Oh my ...
As far back as I can remember, my mother would have me down by the bed at night with her, praying. I can still hear her voice calling my name to God and telling him that she wanted me to follow him in whatever he called me to do.
