I've done nothing but show up and fight, go to work inside the Octagon, outside the Octagon, and do things right. But people want to talk about me and discredit me.
A lot of people want to discredit me.
If someone does something that makes me mad, well, chances are it'll probably make other people mad if I do it, too. I like to think, 'What's the meanest thing, the rudest thing I can say right now?' Or how can I completely discredit someone? That's just my mentality.
The lips on my upper right bicep are my girlfriend's lips. She has the most amazing lips, and I wanted to carry them around with me everywhere I go, considering I can't carry her lips physically with me. So I decided to place them in a discreet location, such as the inside part of my bicep.
For me, good service is efficient and discreet; it's that critical balance. As soon as the client sits down, the communication flow has to start. Customers need to feel that the waiters are supervised - that there's a system in place.
I do love shoes that make my legs longer. I have the upper body of someone who's 5ft 8in, so high heels help me even out the discrepancy.
There's no question that how Johannesburg operates is what made me interested in the idea of wealth discrepancy. 'Elysium' could be a metaphor for just Jo'burg, but it's also a metaphor for the Third World and the First World. And in science fiction, separation of wealth is a really interesting idea to mess with.
Recovery is an ongoing project that is really discrete from everything else in my life. It allows me to be an agent, allows me to write, allows me to be married, allows me to be part of a family. The writing is not a support beam of recovery but a happy consequence of it.
To me, something that's beautiful in terms of a book is something that lives inside the reader both as a discrete and complete thing, but also something that seeps out into their life and thoughts.
Every man has his dignity. I'm willing to forget mine, but at my own discretion and not when someone else tells me to.
If you or me go to the gas station to fill up our car and it costs us much more than we expected, it will zap our discretionary income. We won't have the extra money to buy that washing machine or new winter coat-all big ticket items that are important to economic growth.
I learned compassion from being discriminated against. Everything bad that's ever happened to me has taught me compassion.
I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don't feel threatened. I don't feel discriminated against.
For me, writing for kids is harder because they're a more discriminating audience. While adults might stay with you, if you lose your pacing or if you have pages of extraneous description, a kid's not going to do that. They will drop the book.
People have become less discriminating listeners, which is tragic, really. There's a lot of emperor's new clothes out there, whether they're female or male solo acts. That bothers me. It's hard to break through, and it's like climbing Mount Everest if you actually do.
I can still remember my mum (a voracious, if not discriminating, reader - I have seen everything from the sublime to the ridiculous by her bed, from Ian Rankin and Elmore Leonard to Barbara Cartland and James Patterson) taking me to get my library card when I was four and not yet at school.
My parents told me in the very beginning as a young child when I raised the question about segregation and racial discrimination, they told me not to get in the way, not to get in trouble, not to make any noise.
What I can say is that for may years jazz musicians had to go to Europe, for instance, to be respected and to be sort of treated not in a discriminatory way. I don't think there is anything controversial about me saying that. This is just a fact.
Gerard doesn't tell me what to do. We discuss everything as a couple, as I imagine most partners do. We have a beautiful relationship and one of mutual trust.
When an actor comes to me and wants to discuss his character, I say, 'It's in the script.' If he says, 'But what's my motivation?, ' I say, 'Your salary.'
