There's book smart, there is street smart, there's relationship smart, there's too many different kinds of smarts to know all of them. Everybody doesn't know every kind of smart. There's money smart, there's movie smart, there's computer smart. There's just too many different kinds of smarts for people to know all the smarts.
When I was a kid, and it was time to go to college, I thought, 'College is for people who don't have the street smarts to make it on their own - get in a band, get in a van, and get rockin'.
A lot of people think I came out of nowhere. When you start as a songwriter, nobody knows who you are. I met the guy who wrote 'Yeah' by Usher, which was a huge smash, and nobody knew who he was.
Sometimes, people will fight over five, six percent, because if it's a smash record, that can mean a lot of money. I don't really care.
The way the Establishment deals with people like me is to ignore them. When you become unignorable, they will try to smear you, and that's what I feared for a long time. Now I have somehow vaulted into this space where it's difficult for someone to smear me because it would look as though they were being vindictive and spiteful.
Do you know people on the Right who are tolerant of people who are for gay marriage and are pro-choice? I actually do, plenty of them. When there is a disagreement, I see way more people on the Right... more often willing to agree to disagree rather than to de-friend or to smear.
I like individual scents on a girl, so you always recognize her and you keep her separate from other people in your head. I really love Egyptian musk. I've even gone to the mall and sprayed perfumes and just smelled them. I'm creepy. So creepy.
Desperation is the perfume of the young actor. It's so satisfying to have gotten rid of it. If you keep smelling it, it can drive you crazy. In this business a lot of people go nuts, go eccentric, even end up dead from it. Not my plan.
My people would love it if I smiled more, if I was more 'approachable.'
The house I've bought in London, the holidays, everything has been bought from making people laugh, and if you'd said to me when I was 14 that's how I was going to make my living, I would have smiled from ear to ear.
So that's kind of like how I was, even body guarding with guys I was more of a talker and ran my mouth and smiled and stuff and it kept people off, especially if a guy's is fired up and you're laughing at him or smiling or winking at him it just messes with their mind.
My parents raised me to treat people the way you would want to be treated and to be polite. Sometimes, when I get nervous or insecure, I might overcompensate and might not be totally true to what I am feeling inside. But I get nervous and maybe too smiley and polite.
There have been times in my career when people thought I was a pushover, especially as they saw me as this smiley guy.
People think our music's very aggressive or angry or whatever, and it's just the opposite, really... I like laughing. And I like being really calm before a show, and smiley.
I've actually got turned down for a lot of roles because I'm not bubbly enough. People have told me to be more 'up', but I can't, really. I find it hard to be smiley and giggly all the time.
People don't know what it's like standing up there onstage, when you have a wall of people smiling at you.
People see me high-fivin' and smiling on the court, and they don't think that's me. But it is. I just want to go out and be myself.
We show people that anybody can paint a picture that they're proud of. It may never hang in the Smithsonian, but it will certainly be something that they'll hang in their home and be proud of. And that's what it's all about.
People thought I was very pro-computer. I was on the cover of 'Wired' magazine. Then things began to change. In the early '80s, we met this technology and became smitten like young lovers. But today our attachment is unhealthy.
I was immediately smitten with an attraction to this culture, not in the sense of high culture but of the basic way people behaved towards one another.
