I think we in the Alpha Band, which was a strange group anyway, weren't dealing with any of these issues. They sneaked up on us and took us over, before we know what was going on.
I enlisted when I was a boy. The Navy looked after me like my mother. It fed me, took care of me and gave me wonderful opportunities.
We took up the offer with the BBC, and that was Monty Python's Flying Circus. I didn't have to submit my ideas to the group. I used to turn up on the days we recorded with a can of film under my arm, and in it went.
I liked the give-and-take of a policy discussion in the community, with citizens. I didn't know that even took place, frankly, but I never dreamed it would be an enjoyable thing to do.
It took place in the midnight in the University's Great Hall, in a welter of incense, candlesticks, runic inscriptions and magic circles, none of which was strictly necessary but which made the wizards feel better.
When true love broke my heart in half, I took the whiskey from the shelf, And told my neighbors when to laugh. I keep a dog, and bark myself.
When I was a sophomore at USC, I was a socialist, pretty much to the left. But not when I left the university. I quickly got wise. I'd read about what had happened to Russia in 1917 when the Communists took over.
I'm sure I took some licks at the system, and at trials and lawyers in general. I've seen enough of them for so many years both as a cop and a defendant in defamation cases.
He took me under his wing when I first came to the Rams and taught me everything - his technique in the pass rush, how to play off blockers, and how to make the big play.
It took me 30 years to figure out who I really am, as a person, and who I want to surround myself with. I was very much the kind of person who would just meld in with whatever group I was near.
I was always very silly and never took myself seriously. When my father had the camera out, I'd be up close and annoying. My father would keep saying, 'Move back! Move back!'
Animals arrived, liked the look of the place, took up their quarters, settled down, spread, and flourished. They didn't bother themselves about the past - they never do; they're too busy.
I learned from the guys before me - Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Richard Pryor, just to name a few. These are guys that let it all hang out. What they lived is what they took to the stage.
My friends and I took songwriting very, very seriously. My hero was and still is Bob Dylan, but also people like Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell and that whole generation.
A caveman took a shell, and maybe it had a hole in it, or maybe he put a hole in it, and he put it on a piece of a tail of a donkey or a dinosaur or something and gave it to the cavewoman. She put it around her neck - the first jewel.
When I started my first company, I still had a 40-hour a week job. I was working on my company on nights and weekends before I took the plunge and gave up a salary.
I took a fiction-writing workshop my sophomore year at Northwestern, and I hadn't yet read Junot Diaz or George Saunders, Flannery O'Connor. There was something so attractive about those voices.
Even while starting out I took things very seriously; I wasn't the sort of kid that would do a doll commercial or do a series for Nickelodeon. They asked me to do silly things, and I wasn't a silly kid.
I didn't want to be that artist that is successful as a result of someone else. Not that that's wrong, but I felt like I had what it took. I really believed I could do it on my own, so I wanted to try, at least.
I still have a full-time day job, which is why it took me five years to write An Ear to the Ground, and why I won't have another book finished by next week.
It's a morality film, and it poses the question 'What would you do?' I took it very seriously, just as the director did in terms of atmosphere and lighting, and I was just trying to help that vision along.
