I wanted to get out in the world, have a great job, make my mark, and see how far I could go. And I wanted to make good on the philosophy my mother drilled into us with all the subtlety of a Lady Gaga performance. I got it loud and clear. I would need to succeed, and then I could possibly be happy.
The realisation that, depending on where we changed from one note to the next in a melodic line, the music could subtly influence the entire meaning of a scene in so many ways was like a door opening to this amazing new world for me.
I grew up in the classic American-Jewish suburbia, which has a whole different sense of what it means to be Jewish than anywhere else in the world.
I grew up in suburbia, so it's a world I'm familiar with... but in my experience, all the families that I grew up thinking were the perfect families who kept it together... all their secrets would come out, and it'd be something dark and disgusting beneath the surface, so I wanted to exploit that.
I think Britain can be one of the great success stories of the 21st century - we've got the talent, the drive, the connections around the world. But if we vote to Leave, then we lose control. We lose control of our economy, and if you lose control of your economy you lose control of everything. That's not a price worth paying.
I guess I'm the most successful man I know. I wouldn't trade places with anybody in the world.
The Jewish festival of freedom is the oldest continuously observed religious ritual in the world. Across the centuries, Passover has never lost its power to inspire the imagination of successive generations of Jews with its annually re-enacted drama of slavery and liberation.
We inhabit a world where we're taught that we can have what we desire, and tend to act on it - the least we can do is admit to it when we succumb to our instincts.
I think one of the greatest gigs I played, and we've had many, but to play the opening ceremony at - at the Olympic games in Athens 2004 was pretty special, you know? Because it's such a big deal for the whole world. And the whole world's watching. So that was definitely one of the special ones.
Football is my priority. It's a short career, and you have to make the most of it, which is why making the World Cup squad is such a big deal and something I will never take for granted.
I feel like I've been around for such a long time, as a writer and as an artist, that I need to sort of speak to the way that my perception of the world has sort of changed.
Hollywood has a way of sucking the world's talent to it.
The lens through which I view the media world is pretty simple: If you are in the business of sucking up attention, then you are in the media business.
South Sudan is one of the most hard-put places in the world.
The whole world is set up so that for places like Switzerland to exist, that are crime-free and with the best care for everybody, you have to have places like Sudan, or Jamaica. But really, there's enough to share, when you check it. It's not that complicated, really. It's probably less thinking and more feeling that's required.
Watching the scenes out of New Orleans, if you turn down the sound it could be the Sudan or any Third World country. But it's not. it's the United States of America.
It's a small world when you're from South Sudan.
You can hold yourself back from the sufferings of the world, that is something you are free to do and it accords with your nature, but perhaps this very holding back is the one suffering you could avoid.
A tomb now suffices him for whom the whole world was not sufficient.
The world is a scary place. Even my mother has suggested I take a self defense class.
