My whole life, not just in my professional career but in community theater, I played the supporting role.
With storytelling, you have to see yourself as the hero in the movie of your own life, and I kind of see myself as a supporting role, a walk-on role that has five lines. I say, 'Mr. President, the Russians are here.' That's how I see myself.
I'm just really supportive of everyone - even though I believe that things should be equal, people have different circumstances in their life that have taught them to be who they are. Even if I don't agree with them, I don't judge them. I'm a really non-judgmental person.
My mom, whether it's right or wrong, she had dreams for me to have a certain life. It takes time to get used to that. But they've been really supportive, and they love me for exactly who I am.
If my life has had a theme, I suppose it has been a typical American theme in that, for most of it, I have been looking for happiness and success.
You can't tell young people what to do. You can't tell 'em because they'll look at you and say, 'Well, how can you tell me not to do that when you were there doing it yourself?' Or supposedly were doing it yourself. I think you must let everyone live their life the way they have to.
Over time, we amass limiting beliefs about how life supposedly is - beliefs that are not valid. Then we allow these limiting beliefs to stop us from fully living our happiest lives.
The law of God, and also the way to life, is written in our hearts: It lieth in no man's supposition and knowing, nor in any historical opinion, but in a good will and well-doing.
My first cousin, by the way, on my father's mother side was John Marshall Harlan, who was a Supreme Court justice, as was his grandson. And I think a lot of my fight and my work to struggle for fairness and the techniques of theater and in subject matter probably stems in some way from some sense I have of his issues in life.
Right from my childhood, I have believed in a Supreme Power. I don't know whether it has form, or it is formless. I am a high school dropout. How come life has given me so much? It's not my intelligence, it's not my abilities. This understanding makes me scared even in success. I don't own my success. Neither do I own my failure.
The surest way to get a thing in this life is to be prepared for doing without it, to the exclusion even of hope.
Just as the wave cannot exist for itself, but is ever a part of the heaving surface of the ocean, so must I never live my life for itself, but always in the experience which is going on around me.
I've committed to surfing the rest of my life.
To lose your everyday life of surfing and being creative on waves, enjoying the ocean - that's scary to me. It was essential to at least try surfing again and get out there and see how it went.
I grew up in the Midwest, quite far from any ocean or any beach, a million miles. I think for kids who grew up where I did, the idea of California, surfing and beach life was so exotic and glamorous.
When food prices surge, poor families suddenly find themselves unable to afford enough nutritious food. If this happens during the first thousand days of a child's life, the damage to his or her body and mind can be permanent.
I would like to be a heart surgeon or brain surgeon... something with that knowledge and the ability to save a life would be pretty cool. I wasn't that good in science class, though.
So much of a stand-up's life is doing live radio and having to be funny and quick on the spot with these strangers, and sort of surgical in terms of how funny I can be in three minutes.
A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed - I well know. For it's a sign that he tried to surpass himself.
Even if feminists tear down the bogeyman patriarchy and dominate men in all areas of life, they still won't be happy because deep down, they'll know it's a false victory. Achievement obtained by lowering your opponent to your standard as opposing to rising and surpassing their standard of output isn't achievement. It's mediocrity.
