At heart I've always been a music fan. That part of me has never changed since I was a little kid, sitting in a room watching a record go round, looking at the colour of the labels.
You can almost judge how screwed up somebody is by the kind of toilet paper they use. Go in any rich house and it's some weird coloured embossed stuff.
Every meal is so important and colours the rest of your day - my whole day can go into a spin if I make the wrong choice at lunchtime!
I was packing to go to Columbia University, and they told me that weekend that I got the 'Pitch Perfect.'
When I first came to Columbia University, I was dirt poor. I did not choose to come here - I just ended up here because I had nowhere else to go, having just escaped from China after Tiananmen. I was in a new country where I didn't understand the language, didn't know anybody, and didn't have a penny to my name. So I was desperate and afraid.
I went to Columbia University because I knew I wanted to go to a school that was academically rigorous. I prided myself on getting good grades, but I also hated it.
When you write a book, you are asking someone to make an investment in their time and money. A column can come and go as the weeks pass, but a book needs to be timeless.
Let's not leave an educational vacuum to be filled by religious extremists who go to families who have no other option and offer meals, housing and some form of education. If we are going to combat extremism then we must educate those very same children.
For strange effects and extraordinary combinations we must go to life itself, which is always far more daring than any effort of the imagination.
I was born and raised in the Bronx, and growing up here, you would go down the block, and on one corner you would hear bachata, on another corner some salsa, and of course there was hip-hop and R&B all over the place. So for me, it is very organic to have these combinations.
Theories come and go, but fundamental data always remain the same.
Those who speak ill of the spiritual life, although they come and go by day, are like the smith's bellows: they take breath but are not alive.
Five guys on the court working together can achieve more than five talented individuals who come and go as individuals.
Presidents come and go, but the Supreme Court goes on forever.
We'll all die out eventually. Humans will be gone. And all I'm saying is, when people worry about polar bears disappearing or whatever, it's like, 'Well that's life, things will come and go, we'll find new species.'
A lot of comics will say that the thing about specials now is that they're not special anymore because there are so many of them, and they come and go, and they're not really talked about. They just kind of come and go.
I think people come and go, 'I'm going to find the real Gary. What is it... the real Gary? I've got to find it.' But the thing is, it's pretty much what you see is what you get. I'm just like this. There's no hidden viciousness.
With the Internet, bands can come and go every five minutes and the music looks disposable.
Basketball will come and go, but the person you are will always remain.
Look back, to slavery, to suffrage, to integration and one thing is clear. Fashions in bigotry come and go. The right thing lasts.
