Chairman Mao not only introduced Pinyin in China, but also simplified half the Chinese characters, believing that fewer strokes would enable more people to learn to write the characters.
I'm sick of people sittin' in chairs stating their problems. Then we roll the videotape... then we have our experts on the topic... I'm in the 'What's next?' phase of my career.
I knew that if I could put a table in a room with not much light and a couple of chairs, I could have a real conversation. And I know that people... like to eavesdrop on a conversation.
To grow, people need to be challenged.
There's people who watch shows while they're preparing their dinners, and they don't want to focus, and they don't want to be challenged, and whatever. And then there's people who want to really sit down and get into a character in a world, and feel like they're expanding, or they have complex relationships, or whatever.
Chernobyl happened in April of 1986. A few months earlier, in January 1986, the Challenger space shuttle exploded. It did not have the impact on the environment and the amount of lives that Chernobyl did, but it was the result of the same exact problem: a failure of a lot of people and institutions over a long period of time.
I was just excited to have challenging work to do and smart people to work with.
We are living in very challenging times. Pressured in the workplace and stressed out at home, people are trying to make sense of their lives.
The most challenging thing is people do see me as a tennis player, but I've had a lot of opportunities because I am a tennis player. And I don't mind that.
I faced quite a few challenging times, and in front of those, I was more positive than some people not facing those conditions. I'm actually of the belief now that it is that struggle that offers you that open-hearted hope.
I'm so pathetically eager for people to love D.C. It's so sad. It's like I work for the chamber of commerce or something.
At school, I'd sing in groups in the locker room or in the bathroom, which was like an echo chamber. The problem is I didn't know how to get started singing professionally. The pool hall was my Facebook. I'd hang out there to keep up with what was going on and to let people know where I could be reached if singing jobs came up.
To exist in an echo chamber and only talk to people with whom we agree is fruitless.
I wanted to entertain and make people laugh. I think it really hit in third grade, but once I was in high school, I joined chamber choir. I wanted to do musical theater, too, but they had rehearsals at the same time. That was a bit of 'Sophie's Choice.'
I was horrified when Richard Chamberlain and Rupert Everett said gay actors should stay in the closet. They were saying to people that they should live a lie and not be liberated, to live in fear of being found out.
Lord Chamberlain's readers or controllers, which were a handful of people working directly to him, were a very assorted group of people and some of them tried very hard to be as liberal as they could.
It's like people call me a rock star or this or that. And I go, 'Don't call me that. I don't think of myself in those terms. If you have to call me anything, call me a chameleon.
People try to live vicariously through fighters, but it's one-on-one; it's primal. There's no other feeling like it. The problem for me was accepting it - that nothing compares to being champ.
People could see in me who I am now, an Olympic champ, the best in the world.
I'm the people's champ.
