That's something I've prided myself on: doing exactly what I tell people when I'm running.

One thing I'm not doing in my older age is explaining myself to culturally clueless white people.

I don't see myself as a stand-up comic doing cynical, mean-spirited or disrespectful stuff. I'm very aware that I don't like to disrespect people too much.

I try hard not to repeat myself and not to do material other people are doing. We transcribe every other late-night show to make sure there's no similarity.

When people say, 'If you could do anything else, what would you do?' I would be an actress. That's something that I would do - I can't see myself doing anything else.

I tried softball and soccer. I just didn't take as much of a liking to it as I did sitting in a movie theater and watching people recreate a story, and doing it myself, as well.

I had this contract to write songs for people when I was about 18. I don't think any of them were taken up; I was a complete failure at it! But I've kept doing it, writing little songs for myself.

I think some people wished I'd kept myself out of the book. But I kind of insist on it because I want the reader to share my engagement with the material, if you like, not pretend that I'm doing it completely intellectually.

One of the first things that I did was, I got myself a publicist as soon as 'Maria Full of Grace' premiered in July, so that I could go and meet people that I wanted to meet: the writers and the directors and the people that are doing things.

I'm at the point now where I know I'm doing something right when a movie gets mixed reviews, because then I'm not in the box. I don't want to make it too easy for people and I don't want to make it too easy for myself. I want to try something unusual.

I like to make people laugh. That's for sure. And I really like to humiliate myself and go very far in derision and stuff. But no, I like everything. I started a little bit of doing drama, too. I like that, too. I guess I just want to touch everything.

There aren't many American directors here trying to direct a Japanese yakuza film. When you combine that with the fact that I don't speak much Japanese and this was an independent film I was financing myself - people were curious about what I was doing.

When I started writing, I was reading people such as Tom Clancy or Michael Crichton, who did 'Jurassic Park,' which is possibly the most action-filled book you'll read, apart from mine, and I said to myself, 'Why aren't these guys doing big-scale action like you would see in a movie?'

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