My family's support and the negative environment of the day toward blacks in South Carolina became the forces that led me out of the South - first to New York, then to Philadelphia, where I found opportunity in the form of a PAL gym and my trainer, Y...
Going to New York to do whatever - show business - it just seemed fun. It seemed fun to go to the big city and meet all kinds of different people and maybe be famous. It was just exciting. So I wasn't scared.
I think Bloomberg's broad vision of the environment in New York City is something I agree with. I broadly stand with his vision for how to deal with climate change and prepare for future weather events.
I think me leaving Detroit shaped my style. Me leaving, going to New York, going to L.A. and seeing what they were doing there. I think that inspired me more than what people were doing back home.
England is my home. London is my home. New York feels like, if I have to spend a year living in an unfamiliar city, this is a pretty lovely one to spend a year in, but I will be going home at the end of it, certainly.
In the house in Beverly Hills where our four children grew up, living conditions were a few thousand times improved over the old tenement on New York's East 93rd Street we Marx Brothers called home.
I'm constantly saying that I have bad hair days when I'm in New York. It's so hard. I've been lucky enough to jump immediately into a car, head straight to the location, and stay in the air-conditioning.
I've been very fortunate to play for four great organizations, but New York really takes the cake. Wearing the pinstripes is something that's very special to me, and it's the greatest organization in sports history.
When I was living in New York and didn't have a penny to my name, I would walk around the streets and occasionally I would see an alcove or something. And I'd think, that'll be good, that'll be a good spot for me when I'm homeless.
There's very little you're not exposed to in New York City, in terms of ideas and physical things - sights, sounds, smells, different kinds of people. But one good thing about growing up fast is you get over it fast, too.
I've taken the leap of faith to stop punching the company time clock and start working for myself. I'm now the CEO of Starfish Media Group, my production company, in New York City.
It's funny, because I was trained as a dramatic actor at New York's Colonnades Theater Lab in the '70s, along with Jeff Goldblum, Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman. People I worked with there saw a comedian in me. I'm still most at home in comedy.
I think God must have had something in mind for me that was not on my radar when I first started out in New York. Back then, doing animated voices meant your career was done - it was looked down upon.
Rio was a period of my life, and then, poof, I'm gone. I was very young living here, just kind of floating. New York was a foundation for everything I do today. Rio was the bridge.
I want you to feel happy and enjoy the theatre of my life the way that I do. No matter what happens with my music and wherever I go - that heart of that glamorous girl in New York will never be gone.
I'm living in New York, getting paid to do what I love. I get to boss people around, wear a fancy costume, dance with beautiful mermaids, and meet my fans every night at the stage door. I'm loving it.
I love that about New York: You just dress the way you want to dress and feel really comfortable because nobody is judging. You can just be yourself, and it's perfectly normal.
A lot of people in my world - in the acting world - have either lost friends to Aids or live with HIV because its origin in our culture, in New York for instance, was in the gay community.
No matter where you put me, I don't care if it is North Carolina, Florida, California, New York City; I'm going to be who I am.
I always wanted to be a part of a New York-based label, so I've worked really hard to try and network with people that I felt would put me in the right place.
I went to a bunch of marches in New York and Washington, and you know I believe in the cause, but to march with those people takes a lot of compromise on my end.
