Unavoidable circumstances prevent me from giving you ample written instructions. Such however as may be deemed necessary will be prepared and sent to you at the City of Washington in a very few days.
In 1999, I just came out of putting out the song 'Vivrant Thing' and 'Breathe and Stop' off the 'Amplified' album. Clive Davis signed me to Arista.
I play with feeling so I need to hear what is coming out of the amplifier to inspire me; I don't just play mechanically. I need to hear what I am doing in order to create the next note. If I don't hear it then I can't feed myself.
In the past, I have not been able to hear myself. I play with feeling so I need to hear what is coming out of the amplifier to inspire me; I don't just play mechanically.
My first rock band was called Mike and the Majestics. I was about twelve, and my older sister Kathy was the manager. There were three of us: me and a friend on guitars and a drummer. We were young, but we played for a lot of fraternity parties, plugging both guitars and a microphone into one little amplifier.
Politics is pop. Our job as comedians - especially me, as a late-night talk show, which is a broader audience - is to amplify what we think America is thinking.
When I'm writing, I need to amplify my thoughts and feelings on just a conversation that I might have had with somebody - somebody close to me. It's often the case that the people closest to me are the people on my mind the most.
When I first had my legs amputated, it was hard for me to be positive and feel pretty. Many people don't know that someone with a disability can be strong and beautiful and successful as an athlete.
Amsterdam was a great surprise to me. I had always thought of Venice as the city of canals; it had never entered my mind that I should find similar conditions in a Dutch town.
I remember the moment when it hit me. I was walking down Amsterdam Avenue on the Upper West Side, and it felt like I was literally walking out of a jail cell that I had been in. At that moment, I realized I could shave if I wanted. It was up to me and no one else.
When I was in Cambridge reading mathematics, I went to Amsterdam for the International Mathematics Congress. There I saw M.C. Escher's fascinating work. That inspired me to try my hand at drawing such impossibilities.
And call me a pig, but isn't it brilliantly refreshing how early the Dutch eat dinner? When they're still laying out the cutlery in achingly hip Barcelona, they're hanging the Closed sign on the restaurant doors of old Amsterdam.
I've done commercial work for Amtrak. However, that was branded as Stanton. I stipulated at the very beginning that it was not going to involve 'Humans of New York,' that I wasn't going to promote it on 'Humans of New York.' So nobody who follows me really even knows that I did it.
Rap bores me, and all the glamour rock groups like Bon Jovi just amuse me. They obviously have a place, but they all sound like they use the same guitar player to me.
I love to watch good actors who surprise and amuse me.
I live my life in a very peculiar way where nothing gets my goat as such. I don't look at things in a manner where they offend me. I look at things in a manner where they amuse me.
Tarantino's 'Django' amused me very much. It is as made by an adult that was still a child.
Many times, working is kind of like channeling, and I really don't know what's going to fall on the page. I just did this image of a fat girl and put her on a tiny mountain peak of grass that she's walking over. It just amused me.
It was very lucky for me as a writer that I studied the physical sciences rather than English. I wrote for my own amusement. There was no kindly English professor to tell me for my own good how awful my writing really was. And there was no professor with the power to order me what to read, either.
When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is not amusing herself with me more than I with her.
