Money is not the most important thing, but when you need it, there are few substitutes. So while I like the things money can buy, I love what money won't buy. It bought me a house but it won't buy me a home. It would buy me a companion but it won't buy me a friend.
My mama never wore a pair of pants when I was growing up, and now that's all she wears. It was so funny for me when I first started seeing Mama wear pants. It was like it wasn't Mama. Now I've bought her many a pantsuit because she just lives in them.
My biggest extravagances are also investments. I have several houses in California, a house in Nashville, an office complex, and I bought the old home place in Tennessee. They are different places for me to write, but I can turn right around and sell them.
I've spoken in every state in the union, meeting and hugging the people who later bought my books. I spoke to anybody who wanted to hear me, including 1,000 nuns who could pay me only with homemade bread.
Then as I was wrestling as Terry Boulder. I was on a talk show with Lou Ferrigno, and I was actually bigger than he was! I went back to the dressing room that night and all of the wrestlers go 'Oh my God you're bigger than the hulk on TV' so they started calling me Terry 'The Hulk' Boulder.
I just absolutely adore Denver and the Boulder area. Having lived there several times, it feels like home to me.
The first place I ever performed was at CU Boulder. I went there my freshman year and discovered stand-up after my friends talked me into signing up for a showcase on campus.
My wife is a writer. She grew up in Alaska. She told me she was moving to Boulder and that I could come with her if I wanted to. We were married at the time, so I chose to come with her.
The Paramount executives were so pleased with Sunset Boulevard that they asked me to do a publicity tour.
I'd just sit with Dee Dee on the corner off of Queens Boulevard and drink and insult people and stuff. That's when I got kicked out of my house. My mother told me it was for my own good.
Kids love me. I can bounce back and forth. I can discipline kids, and I can get into the mind of a kid. In my brain, I consider myself the ultimate video game player. The ultimate snack maker.
I've seen Coach Saban over the years have to make a lot of tough decisions, and there's not one decision he doesn't make that he doesn't bounce ideas off the staff. To me, that's invaluable.
I used to have costumed characters come out, like SpongeBob. It's just fun to make it into this minor event, just to surprise people and experiment and be weird and just have fun with it. I've done just the hour stand-up, and that's fun, but the other stuff makes it fun for me and gives me something to react to and bounce off of.
Teachers, people, and, to be honest, some of my classmates didn't understand me. I was the person they didn't like because I would always speak my mind and had a lot of energy. I'd be bouncing around all the time, being very opinionated.
The worst time for me is in the final few hours of taking a track that you've worked on for two years and bouncing it down to the final stereo mix. The overwhelming emotion for me is complete and utter fear that I've made a mistake. I'm scared. Afterward, I obsess endlessly about it.
I think because of the eccentricity of my work and how I dress, people expect me to be bouncing off the walls. But that's just not how I am.
It vexes me when they would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures, and yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment.
Understanding science and pushing the boundaries of science is what makes me immensely satisfied.
I don't get to live by different rules. The same boundaries that apply to everyone apply to me.
I think I have a part of myself which is a woman. When girls are together, they speak completely differently than when there is a guy around. But, with me, they don't see this masculine thing stopping them, and there is not this boundary.
