I was actually born and raised in Puerto Rico. I was born to a single mom. She was a wonderful woman, and she taught me to believe in myself, to work hard, play by the rules. She wanted me to get a good education, and she just told me that the best t...
I had just left Yes and had done a concert at Crystal Palace, South London, with a choir and orchestra playing my solo album 'Journey To The Centre Of The Earth' when I had my heart attack. That day, I hadn't been to bed for four days. I don't rememb...
When I'm playing my best and find myself in contention late on Sundays, it's usually when I'm not thinking about my swing, but rather trusting my setup and smoothly pulling the trigger. I won't completely rely on feel - I like to keep a few images in...
As you get older, stuff starts to wear down. I can't play four basketball games a week anymore. It takes me three days to recover from one. I'm a little older, a little scrappier. So now I do yoga instead. And whatever else happens in the day, I'm se...
I'd written Smashed not because I was ambitious and not because writing down my feelings was cathartic (it felt more like playing one's own neurosurgeon sans anesthesia). No. I'd made a habit--and eventually a profession--of memoir because I hail fro...
Most animals show themselves sparingly. The grizzly bear is six to eight hundred pounds of smugness. It has no need to hide. If it were a person, it would laugh loudly in quiet restaurants, boastfully wear the wrong clothes for special occasions, and...
We don’t have the same backgrounds, we do not possess the same skills or talents, we are not from the same generation, and neither do we have access to the same platform to shine. Things are not equal and life is not constant – there will never b...
The most common mistake students of literature make is to go straight for what the poem or novel says, setting aside the way that it says it. To read like this is to set aside the ‘literariness’ of the work – the fact that it is a poem or play ...
I was the runt of my class. So I got away with the whole 'Oh, he's so cute' thing. I was in upper division math courses, so I would have junior and senior girls in my class, and they'd just sit behind me and play with my hair. I didn't mind that so m...
I wake at 5 or 5:30 most mornings, make myself a latte and grab a cookie, write until 10 or 11, go have my favorite meal, 'second breakfast,' or grab coffee with friends, or play basketball. Then, around noon, I begin apologizing via email for the ma...
Do we not each dream of dreams? Do we not dance on the notes of lost memories? Then are we not each dreamers of tomorrow and yesterday, since dreams play when time is askew? Are we not all adrift in the constant sea of trial and when all is done, do ...
I don't think there's room in video games for people to bring an ego. It's very frustrating for any actor to have someone who's a celebrity take over your place. Like the 'Uncharted' film, they're trying to find someone to play Nathan Drake. And it's...
I followed a girl I met in Japan to Los Angeles and ended up working in a motorcycle store. I quit the job one night, went to a party in the Hollywood Hills and ended up yelling at a bunch of people. Someone saw me yelling and asked me to be in a pla...
Count your blessings. Once you realize how valuable you are and how much you have going for you, the smiles will return, the sun will break out, the music will play, and you will finally be able to move forward the life that God intended for you with...
I'm trying to write a TV show. Ideally it would be just a reality-TV show, getting the guy who played Eddie Winslow and Kirk Cameron to live in a house. The Jehovah's Witnesses would come to the house a lot or something like that. I kind of like the ...
In high school, my first thing ever was I played Tony in 'West Side Story' when I was about 17. I was a really shy kid, and I just, like, forced myself to learn how to sing this one month because I loved 'West Side Story' so much, and I somehow manag...
Anyone who is observant, who discovers the person they have always dreamed of, knows that sexual energy comes into play before sex even takes place. The greatest pleasure isn't sex, but the passion with which it is practiced. When the passion is inte...
I'm a New Zealand actor, and I really want to be doing our stuff here, and our stuff includes plays from overseas. In terms of survival, maybe I should have taken a shot elsewhere at some point, but it gets back to the same theme - we should have our...
'Sister Act' was my first audition out of school. I was 21 and cast as the understudy. It was non-Equity, so I lived in L.A. on $300 a week. I did that for a month and then came to New York to do a couple of gigs, including 'Hair' in the park, before...
As a longtime former resident of 15 years in Washington, I wish that everybody would stay off the Mall with their political cause so that we can get out there, you know, and play flag football or Frisbee, or walk the dog or something - you know, whic...
I had only played five games in my senior year in high school. I was not large enough. Hell, when I graduated, I was about five foot four and weighed 120 pounds. I didn't go with the Dodgers until spring training of 1940 and I weighed all of 155 poun...
