I cut myself off from the mainstream of jazz. It stood me in good stead later on, as a musician.
Maybe I'm flattering myself, but I think my view of humanity has got steadily sunnier since I was 15. I have a higher opinion of politicians, for instance, than I did when I first moved to Washington.
Just the fact that I've lived more, and I'm not concerned about when I am going to get my next job anymore. This business is free-lance and it's not a steady job. Younger, I would have been more preoccupied with myself.
I went through some training with a Navy SEAL. I had to learn how to submerge myself underwater and hold my breath, how to move without creating waves, and how to be very stealth.
I do not abuse players. I talk to myself; I abuse myself. It's my way of letting off steam. I do it after every century; I do not do it always. I keep telling myself: 'Improve, improve from the previous match, the previous shot. You can do it.'
If I were to live my life over again, I would be an American. I would steep myself in America, I would know no other land.
I don't steer clear of genres. I simply haven't steered myself toward some of them.
I started as an actor in the theater playing a lot of character parts, and suddenly, I found myself in this place where it felt like I was getting locked into a kind of a stereotype, and it did bother me.
The great thing that I appreciate - the fact that my godfather, William 'Sticky' Jackson, was a Tuskegee Airman because my father was first born in Ozark, Alabama. The sacrifices and the commitment of those men made it possible for myself and many others.
My biggest failure was trying to start and run a music label. The music industry was dying, and I wasn't ready to help other people the way that they needed to be helped. I was trying to, and I was stifling myself with it.
I've had to prove myself beyond that street-fighter image with some people in the UFC. It has a stigma to it.
I'd rather risk confusion and stay creatively fresh and stimulated. I feel like I'm growing and challenging myself all the time.
In California in the early Spring, There are pale yellow mornings, when the mist burns slowly into day, The air stings like Autumn, clarifies like pain - Well, I have dreamed this coast myself.
I couldn't sustain myself if I skimped on food - I work 16-hour days, I need the energy, I can't afford to be stingy on what I eat.
My mom called me 'Stinky Binky' as a toddler, and I started to refer to myself as, 'I'm Binkie.'
I moved from Stockholm to London, and I didn't want to work with my parents or have them help me in any way, I think just to prove to myself that I have my own talent.
I push myself hard. I don't like pain, exactly, but as a ballerina, I lived in constant pain. At ballet school in Stockholm, I remember we had a locker where if someone had been to the doctor and gotten painkillers, we divided them among us. In a sense, we were all addicted.
Even though it was the 70s, we found old stocks of clothes that had never been worn from the 50s and took them apart. I started to teach myself how to make clothes from that kind of formula.
People have said it's hypocritical for me to call myself a feminist and make the kind of music we are making, because we signed to a major in the U.K., and that system objectifies women. Or people have complained that I don't dance. But I like the idea that I can stomp around the stage if I want.
I left school at 16 and my mother got me a job as a trainee wine taster. But one day I followed some girls into St Martin's art school and saw a voluptuous woman sitting on a stool being sketched. I decided to get myself fired.
