A lot of comics aren't their on-screen personas; Chris Rock isn't always ranting and raving. What I do is make myself this over-the-top character that people either find endearing or they think is a joke. Then I can do anything I want.
I never had a role model. I ended up wanting to be the best version of myself.
I look at improvising as a prolonged game of chess. There's an opening gambit with your pawn in a complex game I have with one character, and lots of side games with other characters, and another game with myself - and in each game you make all these tiny, tiny moves that get you to the endgame.
Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don't know that I'm doing it, usually.
I had to learn, really, how to rein in my energies and discipline myself. And I found it very very useful. I rebelled against it at first, but it's a good thing to have.
I get by mostly on speaking engagements, but as soon as I try to pay myself, I end up having to give it back to the business to cover operating expenses or other unplanned costs.
Whether I'm running on the beach without my shirt or whether I'm going out with my kids or going to church or going out to dinner - I don't choose to insulate myself in engaging in real life. Hence, the public kind of almost knows me as much through my real life that they see through the rag mags.
I alone of English writers have consciously set myself to make music out of what I may call the sound of sense.
I was an English major at UCLA when I was 18, and then I left after a year to start acting. I was educating myself during that time.
I've played a lot of very posh, sort of noble or aristocratic English people, which is nothing like what I am, so I feel that there is quite a lot distance there and have played a little bit far away from myself.
I taught myself English. My English teacher was the sitcom 'Friends.' Back in the days when I was, like, 15, 14, it was like a syndrome for Korean parents to make their kids watch 'Friends.' I thought I was a victim at that time, but now I'm the lucky one.
I could never have pictured myself writing a book when I was 25 years old. My mom was an English teacher but I wasn't that way growing up.
Kathy Dewar, my high-school English teacher, introduced me to journalism. From the moment I wrote my first article for the student paper, I convinced myself that having my name in print - writing in English, interviewing Americans - validated my presence here.
I look at myself, and I see a Spanish person who's trying to be understood by an English-speaking audience and is putting a lot of energy into that, instead of into expressing himself freely and feeling comfortable.
After 'Mad Men,' I got offered various types of uptight Englishmen, which I wasn't interested in doing. I didn't want to repeat myself.
I write on a computer. On breaks, I'll make myself green tea. I don't want something too caffeinated. I guess I don't believe in chemical enhancement of my writing. Just slight, but nothing crazy.
I love being an enigma. Every time I'm tempted to respond to someone who tries to put me in a box, politically - you know, someone who gets on the Internet and says, you're pro-gun, or you're anti-gun - I stop and say to myself, 'This is great; this is what I wanted. I wanted to be the guy you can't figure out.'
I don't consider myself enigmatic, but I don't spend a lot of time thinking about my public persona.
Since I'm a fan of collections and anthologies, believe that the best writing often shines in shards and galloping stretches, I never find myself lobbying for a writer I enjoy reading regularly to hole up in Heidegger's hut for four or five years to bring forth a mountain.
For me, literature is a way of enlarging myself by learning about people who are not like me.
