When I first started coming to New York in the early Nineties and seeing the vitality of the programme compared to what was going on back in London or Paris, it was just in a different league. It's like a 16th-century court.
What is Norah Jones' style? Is it just the albums that we've heard? She has a rock group where she plays guitar in, downtown in New York, so do we really know her style?
Around New York, I used to hear that expression, 'Once a Dodger, always a Dodger.' But how about, 'Once a Yankee, always a Yankee?' There never was anything better than that. You never get over it.
In New York, we get down. In L.A., everybody's pretty much standing around like they're at a keg stand. You got to get the party started, so I just take my shirt off.
As I was coming up on the stage, there was one source that could make or break you, the New York Times. Inevitably there would be one actor singled out for a better review, or worse, than somebody else. The effect of that was cancerous, divisive.
I'm very friendly or whatever, but I would hardly say that I'm that cookie-cutter. I don't live in L.A. or New York. I live in Texas, and I go to hole-in-the-wall bars, so there's no paparazzi there.
I use a professional researcher in New York who does all the legwork, all that stuff which would take me days and weeks of calling, waiting for people to call back.
The book was at a reasonably high position on the New York Times... before I was in the country. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to see if my presence here would push it up or down.
The day after we had pitched a game, it was our duty to stand at the gate, and afterwards to count the tickets. I remember counting 30,000 tickets one day at the Polo Grounds in New York.
There was no person, whether they thought I was too fat, too black, too country, too ghetto, too New York, too thug or too whatever! Nobody ultimately had the say over whether or not I was going to make it.
I feel like if you're in Jersey, you have to be a Jersey Devils fan. Anybody born within the confines of the border of the state of New Jersey, I feel, should be a Jersey Devils fan.
I think comics in New York are interested in being comics. And there're comics in L.A. who are touring comics, who are certainly more interested in stand-up, but a lot of L.A. stand-ups are really looking to do something else.
My new album that I'm creating, which is finished pretty much, was written with this new instinctual energy that I've developed getting to know my fans. They protect me, so now it's my destiny to protect them.
I must therefore implore your indulgence for a pretty long and plain development of my views concerning that cause which the citizens of New York, and you particularly, gentlemen, honour with generous interest.
I am always keen to discover something new, but my advice is always to exfoliate. Get rid of those dead, dry cells; then the new skin is ready for moisturising, and you find your inner dewy, youthful glow. It's in there somewhere.
I did nine months in 'Mrs. Klein' in New York, then four months on the road. Then I did a movie directed by Philip Haas, who did 'Angels & Insects'. We shot 'The Blood Oranges' in Mexico for six weeks.
And wouldn't we be better off if every New Year's, we thought about the things we did right and we resolved to keep doing them, no matter how wacky they were.
City of prose and fantasy, of capitalist automation, its streets a triumph of cubism, its moral philosophy that of the dollar. New York impressed me tremendously because, more than any other city, it is the fullest expression of our modern age.
Our goal here in New York is to ensure that every child who graduates high school is ready to start a career or start college and to dramatically increase the number of students that graduate from college.
New York is such a competitive place; it tears people apart. People come here and, if they can't make it in the first month, they get torn apart and they have to go back to where they came from. I don't think that's terribly healthy.
I did a show called 'Wonderland' a few years back, and I was fortunate enough to spend a full-on two weeks - I'm talking 13-15 hours a day - with the doctors and patients at Bellevue in New York. That served me well for 'Durham County.'
