I knew I needed to move away when I was 15, but when I got to Norwich, I spent nights crying myself to sleep with homesickness. For any young kid moving away from home, that is the biggest thing you have to deal with.
I really believe in myself. I'm the hardest worker I know, and one of the best songwriters. There's a craft to it, and it takes a long time to hone it, and I work really hard at it.
I would describe myself as a very plain but very honest person.
The honest truth is - and I have felt this way forever - is my largest competitor is myself. Always. I am intimidated by my own hang-ups about acting more so than anything, any part, any director.
I always think of myself as a comedy feeder type person, and that feeder lets themselves get out of your comfort zone as opposed to straight stand up; that feels like honing one skill, like honing one point of view.
I don't want to be in somebody else's movie, and then they make all the money. I've gotten offers to do the movies, but I won't sell myself short and be in somebody else's movie, like 'Boyz N the Hood.' I don't think I woulda done that.
It's kind of like a challenge to myself to be able to hear somebody else's hook and kind of interpret the words. Because my own hooks, I already know what I mean when I write them.
I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.
I was sick of waiting for people to jump on hooks for songs I produced. So I tried singing myself, and I haven't looked back.
Writing 'Hoop Roots' was a substitute or a surrogate activity. I can't play anymore - my body won't cooperate - so in the writing of the book, I was looking to tell a good story about my life and about basketball, but I was also looking to entertain myself the way that I entertain myself when I play.
I won't have a traditional marriage; I don't find the value in that anymore. But I am such a hopeless romantic and I really want love and I want a committed relationship, so I am going to reinvent marriage for myself.
My dream has always been to suspend myself in space when I write, and lying horizontal in bed is the closest to doing that.
You know, you don't work 30 something years in this business without knowing how to push yourself. So, I just kept pushing myself and pushing myself. The other thing that happens is when your hormones get out of whack your emotions come up.
I'd rather play a tune on a horn, but I've always felt that I didn't want to train myself. Because when you get a train, you've got to have an engine and a caboose. I think it's better to train the caboose. You train yourself, you strain yourself.
I think generally I'm a pretty good person if I had to grade myself. Or toot my own horn.
I'd taken the bull by the horns by liberating myself and creating a career. It took guts - it was scary and chancy - but they discounted me as empty-headed: some little piece of fluff without any brain that happened to come along.
Maybe I'm ego-tripping, but I don't find myself a particularly horrible person, so I don't think I need to hold back anything I think or feel.
I don't want to paint myself as some villain - I was never a bad guy doing horrible things, but I got too caught up in wanting a very specific thing to happen to the band. Ultimately, I had to find the ability in myself to get over that and stop being so stringent and learn to laugh a little bit more.
I just tend to do things to myself that I don't realize I'm doing. Sometimes I bite my lip so that it splits and hurts, and yet I can't stop. And sometimes I'd play shows on the last run, I'd scratch my neck while I was singing, and I'd horrified to see these red streaks of blood after.
I'd never watch a horror film, but after I found out I was going to be in one, I watched, like, four of them, including The Shining, I was terrified - I couldn't sleep for days. But I wanted to get myself used to things I was going to see on the set.
