When you’re growing up, it takes a long time for you to realize that there’s something different about you. On one level, you know there’s something strange, but on another, yourself is the only thing you ever knew.
My mom had me at 16 and took me every place she went. I remember going on peace marches. She tried to take me to Woodstock - it was pouring rain. It was on my birthday, and I was crying so much in the car they turned the car around and dumped me at m...
While I put forth the suntan and the teeth and the cavalier attitude, I've survived under the worst of eras and times, and I've always had a good time doing it, because I never really took myself seriously, nor did I take life seriously because it is...
Obama does not represent America. Nor does he represent anything what our forefathers stood for. This country is basically built on an attitude. It's a way of life. It's not because you're born here. It's not that you're supposed to take from those w...
You know when you read that someone has to leave a show or a tour because they had 'nervous exhaustion'? Well, I had one of those and discovered that I was quite close to death. I always assumed that my lifestyle was going to take me at an early age,...
When you see young players coming into the squad and pushing you, no matter what age you are, you have to react. You have to worry about yourself and perform as well as you can. If you end up looking around at others, wondering who's performing bette...
Truly, learning appears to be a reverse geometric progression with experiences at one hour, one day, one month or one year dramatically more influential and formative than later experiences. As has often been quoted, 85% of brain development takes pl...
Did you come of age in those sweet summers of the early nineteen-sixties, when the airwaves were full of rock and roll's doo-wop promise of joy and the nation was full of J.F.K.'s eloquent promise of a New Frontier? I did. Life seemed to be laid out ...
When I started, there was something almost romantic about the notion of paparazzi. I mean, it wasn't. They were still chasing you down the road. But that guy had to put film in his camera and work out whether it was worth pressing the button to take ...
My older brother was a musical prodigy, and he got a scholarship to the Bronx House Music School. We moved to the Bronx when I was 4 to be close to his music school. Then I got a music scholarship myself, at the age of 6, but that was for a school do...
In the two-room flat where I live in Japan, I try to take time every day to step away from the bombardment of e-mails and opportunities and papers around my desk, for an hour, and just sit on our 30-inch terrace in the sun, reading something sustaini...
I am convinced that a good building must be capable of absorbing the traces of human life and taking on a specific richness... I think of the patina of age on materials, of innumerable small scratches on surfaces, of varnish that has grown dull and b...
Age does take it out of you, and I haven't the energy I had before. Sometimes I have breakfast and sit in this chair, and I wake up and it is lunchtime. In the past, the idea of sleeping through a morning would have horrified me, but you have to acce...
I don't know what has caused this reawakening in academia. Obama? The GOP's assaults on science and on patients? Jon Stewart? I'm not at all sure. I just know I don't feel nearly as alone in academia as I used to. I'm feeling increasingly surrounded ...
You marry your friends when you stay with your friends. It's hard enough to find a good roommate, let alone a good person you can live with and fall in love with at the same time. You might as well just take your roommate, if you can find one, and ma...
If you're playing your character and you're running into all these people who know who you are and treat you in a way that doesn't pertain at all to the character, it takes you out of it more, so when you're alone in a city where people don't know yo...
I think there's no question that Michael Jackson was the foremost entertainer of his generation; perhaps of all time, arguably, taking the skills of a Sammy Davis, Jr., bringing together the street dance of African American urban culture, joining the...
I really like the group tour better than going it alone. First of all, it kind of takes the pressure off a little. I'm not a naturally extroverted person. But I also like it because it brings in new fans. For example, someone who really loves Aprilyn...
I hope to keep writing journalism as long as I write fiction; it's afforded me such amazing adventures and opportunities. It does take a lot of time, so it's hard to do both at once, but I try to do a big journalism piece every couple of years, and I...
I had a client who was a professional baseball player once, and he would go to clubs and dance for seven, eight, nine hours at a time. He wouldn't drink, he wouldn't take drugs - he just danced because he had so much physical energy; he was this amaz...
I originally wanted to embrace the imagery and forthrightness of rap music. There are some interesting, dynamic voices in rap. But I find most of it irresponsible in its overt violence and commercialization of anger. As artists, we believe we can wil...
