Richard Pryor is, in my mind, the most honest comedian. He bared his soul to people. I think that's why everybody loved him so much.
'Envy the Night' was my first stand alone, the first book I'd written in the third person and I loved the feel of that, and it was different but it was also the same. 'So Cold the River,' I knew, was going to be really different, and that's why I thought about doing it as a novella under a pseudonym, because I didn't want to damage my career.
I was such a fan of Quentin's growing up. I remembered I wanted to see 'Pulp Fiction' so badly, but my mom had seen it, and even though she loved it, she just thought it wasn't appropriate for a 13-year-old.
I caddied for a guy who was a very good player, and he gave me a set of clubs, just a starter set: 5-iron, 7-iron, 9-iron, putter and driver. I just loved it. How I developed my swing was to just grab a club and start banging balls.
My aunt was Frances Hodges, who in the Fifties was the editor of 'Seventeen' and later one of the creators of 'Mademoiselle.' She was my Auntie Mame; she loved culture. She was a Quaker, but she became a milliner against all Quaker logic - they feel that fashion and art are vanities - because she loved fashion.
The team aspect of football and just playing quarterback, having the ball in your hands, having to make the plays, that was definitely something I loved.
I have sometimes questioned the advice and direction I received from my parents and grandparents, but I never questioned the fact that they loved me. I learned that they were in a better position to know more about right and wrong than I did from my limited understanding and from my limited experience.
I was almost ready to call it quits - sick of doing a job and then being back on the unemployment line and trying to make ends meet. But I loved acting and didn't know what else to do.
I was such a big Kiss and Van Halen fan, Yngwie Malmsteen, Racer X... all that stuff. I loved everybody.
I loved the fact that Obama is multi-racial. I thought that was terrific, as my wife is the same racial make-up.
I always loved bands who would try to change their sound radically album to album, experiment in one album and revert back in another.
I loved 'Planet of the Apes,' and I loved 'Star Wars,' and I loved 'Raiders of the Lost Ark,' and to me, the goal always was to work on something as cool as that.
I don't think I've made my favorite film yet. But I loved 'Bamboozled.' 'Bamboozled' to me is off the chain. It's definitely in the ranking. I loved 'Bamboozled.'
I grew up idolising Madhuri Dixit, though I wasn't a Hindi film buff. I had an academic upbringing, and movies were a rarity. I looked up to Madhuri because I loved dancing, and she's a fantastic dancer.
I loved to party with the Rat Pack; they were so much fun.
One thing I've always loved and rated me dad for is that, because of him, I've never seen the Queen's Christmas speech.
I've always loved listening to music on my own, but there's another side of me that is just fascinated by... like Goa trance, for example - just a rave on a beach in India, you know? Where there's someone that's spinning the music, and it's just this free-flowing, continuous energy.
I watched the Disney Channel all the time growing up. 'Lizzie McGuire' was my all-time favorite. I'm pretty sure I had every piece of merchandise that involved Lizzie. And I loved 'That's So Raven.'
Grime, in particular, is not really about pirate radio and local raves on top of pubs anymore. There are things I miss about those times but as an up-and-coming MC, back then, I would have loved to have had SoundCloud and YouTube and all these platforms to promote my music.
Yeah, I loved Ray Bradbury.
