My dad is good at sticking with stuff and he has a strong work ethic, which is imbued in me. Growing up, he would constantly ask what I was doing and was I achieving anything.
Growing up in Ohio and just being kind of an average guy from flyover country - my dad was a factory guy - I try to put things on a screen that reflect reality. I don't mind if people want to argue with that, or think that's crazy.
My dad came from Cuba when he was a teenager not speaking English. And I grew up here speaking Spanglish. That's the world in which I grew up, and that's a world in which a lot of second generation immigrants find themselves.
The military infrastructure grew me. My faith in God is important, my belief in my country is important, my relationship to my family is important, the things that Mom and Dad tell you growing up are important.
My dad is a lawyer and my mom is an artist. So growing up was exactly what it sounds like - strict household but a lot of creativity. They are so psyched that I get to make music for a living. My parents rule.
All stories interest me, and some haunt me until I end up writing them. Certain themes keep coming up: justice, loyalty, violence, death, political and social issues, freedom.
I'm sick to death of famous people standing up and using their celebrity to promote a cause. If I see a particular need, I do try to help. But there's a lot that can be achieved by putting a check in the right place and shutting up about it.
I'm a really hectic dreamer; I never wake up not out of a dream, and there's loads going on, lots of action, big blockbuster dreams, they're all major enterprises.
I do not have bad days. I don't wake up in the morning and think that I'm going to get AIDS. I don't dream bad dreams about it. If I did, I'd be giving in to the negativity.
The English expression 'to fall asleep' is apt because the transition between waking and sleeping is a gradual drop from one state of being into another: a giving up of full self-consciousness for unconsciousness or for the altered consciousness of d...
I never was interested in being part of the fashion world - I just wanted to design shoes. I didn't even know 'Vogue' existed when I was growing up. 'Vogue,' what is that?'
I guess there are all these women with a big secret - they're hiding men they are ashamed of. They come up to me and say: 'I've been dating this guy for six months in secret but none of my friends know. I can't give him up even though he's embarrassi...
We had two rules growing up in my house: If you're going to take a shower, do it with whomever you're dating so you don't waste water; and if you buy one for yourself, buy six, because everybody's going to want one.
State governments generate less revenue in a recession. As state leaders struggle to make up for lost revenue, legislatures tend to cut funding for higher education. Colleges, in turn, answer these funding cuts with tuition hikes.
I am a big believer in education, because when I grew up in Austria - when I grew up in Austria I had a great education. I had great teachers.
Education was the most important value in our home when I was growing up. People don't always realize that my parents shared a sense of intellectual curiosity and a love of reading and of history.
I find the education I got from living in Derby and being streetwise and knowing the people that I know, the lessons that I had to learn growing up, have set me in good stead for this kind of working life.
A good education gives you confidence to stick up your hand for anything - whether it is the job you want, or the bloke. And the more you stick up your hand, the better your chances are that you will get what you want.
Okay, when you start to fight for equality, like Anand did in 1995, you could end up losing game 10, like he did, without putting up any kind of fight.
I slept fourteen feet from a polka tavern as a kid growing up. I heard polkas all night long, people singing and drinking beers and having a great time. I know more polkas than Frankie Yancovic!
What's great about comedy, obviously, is that you set up a situation that people assume one thing and then you break the assumption. That's basically the backbone to comedy. You set up a situation, let people make an assumption, and then you break th...
