All I wanted to do was write - at the time, poems, and prose, too. I guess my ambition was simply to make money however I could to keep myself going in some modest way, and I didn't need much, I was unmarried at the time, no children.
I could see myself in a white nurse's uniform, working unnoticed for many years and at last dying, unknown, unmarried and unsung.
I myself saw the great works of Western civilization for the first time in my high school in Lithuania in bad black-and-white reproductions on miserable paper. That was, for many years, what art was for me. But from those miserable black-and-white reproductions, I got something, something unmistakable.
I am the most successful unsuccessful actor in New York. And I guess with that, maybe apparent only to myself, there started to be a very subtle but unmistakable whiff of entitlement, bitterness, jealousy. I was not respecting the work.
In avoiding the appearance of evil, I am not sure but I have sometimes unnecessarily deprived myself and others of innocent enjoyments.
I look at the way that my kids interact with technology, and it becomes a mirror to the ways in which I myself interact with technology. I can see the ways in which that addiction and compulsion starts to settle in on them, and it's much more unnerving to see it in them than it is to experience it myself.
The biggest thing I try to do is to unplug and give myself time away from social media and the Internet.
I see myself as an old man and an unqualified teacher to the nation. I think being a teacher is probably the most important thing you can be in politics.
But the idea of a man making his living by writing seemed, in that hardy environment, so fantastic that even today I am sometimes myself assailed by a feeling of unreality.
So instead of beating myself up for being fat, I think it's a miracle that I laugh every day and walk through my life with pride, because our culture is unrelenting when it comes to large people.
Are there moments when I see unrequited crushes or ex-boyfriends slow dancing with their dates and kind of want to stab myself in the spleen with a salad fork? Yeah, sure.
I often find myself unsatisfied with books 'about' Indians because they are written from the viewpoint of non-Indians.
When I play '2K,' I'll play in GM mode. And I choose different teams. But I always trade for myself because I'm unstoppable. Literally there's no way to stop me in '2K.'
Essentially, I'm untrained, so I just go with my imagination and try to put myself as solidly as I can into the shoes of whatever person I'm going to be playing.
I pride myself on leaving no stone unturned as far as being the most prepared that I can be.
I was an unusually big kid for my age and did not know how to express myself after being targeted as the odd one out. I thus landed myself in trouble for reacting aggressively. But with time, I succeeded as an athlete and people started respecting me.
When I was a junior and an up-and-coming athlete, I don't think I looked to anyone for inspiration. I was so busy trying to improve myself and learning these new events and learning about the decathlon in general that I didn't really have time to focus on anyone else.
I do tend to sometimes keep myself updated with whatever is trending but I don't really follow fashion trends.
I'd like to keep updating myself. That's the only way to make life interesting. And because I am a performer, I like to do it deliberately and with purpose.
I don't consider myself a competition to anyone. There is ample space for everyone here. When there are directors who create characters for me, why should I feel bothered or insecure? When it comes to updating myself, I work very hard to relate to the emotions of characters I play.
