I always knew I wanted to be a technologist, so I went to Duke and got a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. Really, I thought my goal in life was to be an inventor, a problem solver, so I thought I needed a Ph.D. to be good at inventions, but it turns out that you don't.
Over the course of my life, I have made many transitions - most of them taking me further away from my Somali roots and steadily toward the enlightened mentality of Western democracy.
Life in Somalia before the civil war was beautiful. When the war happened, I was 8 years old and at that stage of understanding the world in a different way.
My stories are very somber, so I think I need the comic ingredient. Besides, life has so much humor.
You know, I have seven children, so I guess I know some things about life.
As I go through life, I can see why my mother directed me that way, or why my father counseled me in that way. But some things you're open to when you're young, and some things you need to find out for yourself. I think that that's pretty universal.
My life is very exciting now. Nostalgia for what? It's like climbing a staircase. I'm on the top of the staircase, I look behind and see the steps. That's where I was. We're here right now. Tomorrow, we'll be someplace else. So why nostalgia?
Even though my songs may sound very personal, to me most of them are fiction. It is a great way for me to be able to live a fantasy life as a writer because I get to be someone else, someplace else for three and a half minutes, just like the listener.
As a kid, I certainly never thought I would get to spend my life doing something fun.
I feel like at the end of your days, the last thing that's going to happen is that you're going to watch the movie of your life. It's very important to make sure that you love your movie and that you want to watch your movie, so I try to always make sure that I'm doing something fun and interesting.
The important thing is that men should have a purpose in life. It should be something useful, something good.
Success is a scary concept because it assumes something kind of final. In the grand scheme of life, I don't think there is some ultimate success.
I don't really think about doing something kind, I think there's just a way to conduct your daily life with compassion to other people.
The television has opened a lot of doors for me. I am very successful at what I do, and I live a good life. It's not something that I'm embarrassed of. I think it's something people should want to aspire to.
I never thought in my life, I never really thought I would get married. I watched my parents go through a divorce, and I thought, like, this is just not something people are supposed to do.
One can never pay in gratitude; one can only pay 'in kind' somewhere else in life.
I wouldn't want to do a Bollywood film per se, but I would like to do an Indian-language film. For some reason I think Bollywood has become synonymous with commercial cinema, which is song and dance and everything that is larger than life, and I am interested in the reality.
Not comfortable doing song and dance stuff as no normal person does in his/her real life.
When it comes down to the song writing, I'm just very slow - very slow. Because the songs are about my life, so I'm doing emotional work on myself.
The Richard Ashcroft of 1992 would have struggled to imagine the path my life has taken - he would be amazed at the changes in my song writing.
