I started off with the really funky stuff like Ramsey Lewis, Milt Jackson, Kenny Burrell.

My playing started to develop through the Miles Davis stuff I was listening to.

I was coerced into taking piano lessons in the early '50s. It was a quite unpleasant experience.

I started off with the really funky stuff like Ramsey Lewis, Milt Jackson, Kenny Burrell.

I saw Suicide in '74 and it was pretty horrifying.

Even by the time I was four or five, I had Gene Autry records.

Reading music is something that's inherently hateful to me. It makes music like mathematics.

The Stones were nasty and ugly and doing songs I was familiar with.

By then I was in Brooklyn and drank my way through that summer. I stopped when I got sick of that and got a job at the Strand bookstore, which was a little better than the tax job.

I really feel fortunate to have been around then because there have been good and bad years in rock but the best years were '55 to early '61. I got to see Buddy Holly and everybody else.

I was 12 in '55 when rock and roll hit. It just completely transformed me.

From '69 til '76, I never played in public. I would play by myself at home.

Meanwhile after failing the bar twice, I knew some people in New York and moved here in August '71.

I never really followed grunge.

After I exhausted the blues thing, I got into jazz.

I think Blank Generation holds up pretty well. You listen to that with headphones and there's a lot going on there with the guitars- it's the product of a lot of fighting.

By many peoples' standards, my playing is very primitive but by punk standards, I'm a virtuoso.

It was just like Howlin' Wolf. Once you arrive at the point that you understand it, the emotional factor is darker than some of the saddest blues stuff.

I quit the tax job then and decided that I was going to play in a band. I answered ads in the Village Voice and went through two days of auditioning for bands.

Were sorry youre feeling poorly the factorys empty of your laughter so get yourself well cos we miss you mate youre a much sought after grafter.

When I came to New York in 1949, there was already an entire fresh avant-garde film movement blooming in New York and California. It was a very, very exciting period!

But I would like to think that it's the actor that makes the difference in these cases. Not the director, not the guy that wrote the book, not the guy that adapted it for the screen, but the actor.

Close to 80 percent of all terrorist activity in Samaria was directed and financed either by Hizbullah or the Iranians. Iran continues to increase its involvement in terror attacks inside Israel, particularly through a small but radical minority of Israeli Arabs which Iran supports and directs.

'Just looking at pictures' used to be considered cheating. No longer. The graphic novel is booming. Comics, heavily illustrated texts, books with no words are now accepted as reading.

I have Marvin Gaye's driver's license. His wife sent it to me, because she really loved my 'Happy People' record. She said that she thought it represented the sprit of her husband. The license is from California. I get inspired every time I look at it.

Exuberance is beauty.

Kumar Mangalam Birla is one of the most respected business persons.

I don't have to go to the weight room. I don't have to go work out if I don't want to.

People in Afghanistan want peace, including the Taliban. They're also people like we all are. They have families, they have relatives, they have children, they are suffering a tough time.

Being fired from a show - being fired in any way, in any instance, any business - is just hard.

I was so honored to be on 'Entourage' for eight years but I want to show people that I can do other things.

Jesus Christ is my savior.

The only people that can make peace are the parties to the conflict, and just as they are responsible for the conflict and its consequences, so should they be given responsibility and recognition for the peace.

You quickly find, when you are a hand-reader as I am, that nothing interests people so much as themselves.

You might as well ask why a middle-aged man with no criminal record might put a paper bag over his head and rob a bank. I acted out of personal desperation.

The only way to thrive is to innovate. It's that simple.

It's a bit of a history lesson, being an actor. I was in 'Burnt By The Sun' at the National, which was set in Stalinist Russia, so I discovered all about that. You learn so much as you go along.

Think before you speak. Read before you think.

I had been taught that if I cried, to be quiet about it, so whereas I never howled, the least thing made me cry both at school and at home. Crying tends to separate a child from other children, for even children dislike a cry baby, and I had no friends in the world.

I thought I'd never do film, let alone television. I was a diehard theater nut.

But after the spirit of conquest had changed the first governments, all the succeeding ones have, in general, proved one continued series of injustice, which has reigned in all countries for almost four thousand years.

Accessories are important and becoming more and more important every day. They can completely change the look of an outfit, and women like the idea of having a wardrobe that's versatile. For instance, a strong piece of jewelry can make a simple outfit look elegant.

I am haunted by what my life would have been had I not had the courage in my early twenties to leave Pittsburgh for New York City and really commit to being a writer. Pittsburgh is both post-industrial and provincial, and the opportunities there are limited. It would have been quite easy to simply drift through life.