My mother would put me on a wooden box at the stove and tell me to call her if certain things would happen. Like if the steam turns blue, that is danger!
When I was growing up, my father would not allow me to get a perm, so I straightened my hair for special occasions.
My music is straightforward because I want to give people me and let them know they're not alone in going through the things that they go through.
If I'm going to be straightforward, like I always try to be, I know guys are going to come back at me sometimes.
Everyone asks me why someone Turkish is making Greek yogurt. In Greece, it is not called 'Greek yogurt.' Everywhere in the world it is called 'strained yogurt.' But because it was introduced in this country by a Greek company, they called it 'Greek yogurt.'
I did recording sessions as a musician as well as a background vocalist and enjoyed every minute of it. I remember singing harmony with Waylon Jennings on a few songs that were hits. Chet Atkins always put me up so high that I strained to hit every note. It was a lot of fun.
It's no secret that I have, at best, a strained and awkward relationship with my dad. The Wasserman family - my mom, my sister, Lew and Edie - raised me. They are the people I define as my family.
I didn't know they would pay you money to sit in a room and write songs for other people. I always thought that George Strait was singing a song, he made it up, and that was the end of it. But the instant I found that out, that that could be a job, I thought, 'That's the job for me. I gotta figure out how to do that.'
My grandmother loved country music, and she's the one who really got me into country music. She had George Strait tapes, a bunch of them. I remember listening to tapes, taking them out, the covers and the back.
When I was 3, my mom sent in a video of me singing George Strait to 'America's Funniest Home Videos.'
For me, the thought of spaghetti and meatballs conjures up the image of that scene where 'Lady and the Tramp' gaze into each other's eyes as they slurp a strand of pasta into a fateful kiss.
As a child, I saw my mother prepare for Christmas every year, and it never occurred to me that labor was involved. I thought it was my mother's joy and privilege to hang tinsel on the tree strand by strand, to make sure that every room in the house had a touch of Christmas, down to the Santa-themed rug and hand towels in the bathroom.
No one has yet convinced me a dollar stranded overseas is better than a dollar brought back home here to America for any reasons. So, if a company needs it, whether it's to do research, buy another business in America, grow jobs or try to become more financially strong, that is good for the United States.
Wikipedia is a strange thing. Whoever gets there first, you know, they decide. Like the picture: You can't choose it! You can't be like, 'You know, I hate that picture of me doing stand-up from 2005 - that doesn't exemplify who I am.' You take it down, and someone puts it back up.
Let me be accurate in everything, for though you and I have seen some strange things together, you may at the first think that I, Van Helsing, am mad. That the many horrors and the so long strain on nerves has at the last turn my brain.
To me, NASA is kind of the magical kingdom. I was sort of a geek, and you go there, and there are just these wondrously strange things and people.
To me, the whole idea of fame and I think it can be a real test of somebody, of who they are. You know, 'cause some strange things happen. I've seen some peculiar things as far as a person just living their life.
I like to write about real people, real crimes. But what has increasingly come to interest me, and also appear to me as a challenge, is the idea of doing strange things with what is real. Take what is real and make it more or less real.
I love Hugh Laurie, but I don't want to be a guy who goes to work every day for nine months of the year in a corner of Burbank. I really don't. I like doing a bit here and a bit there and strange things, and I think that's held me back.
It was a really strange way that I came into music. Once I gave voice to it, the pit of emotions that I guess I knew was inside of me for a long time, the stream never really stopped.
