If you read a book about school - someone else's book - you always translate it into your own school experiences. It's describing the student: he's bewildered and lost in a large crowd in a university classroom. You'll visualize that from your own experiences. So, everything you know is what you're really writing.
Being brave is what led to three rejections from Yale Law School before being accepted. It led to losing my 2010 race for U.S. Congress, and another failed bid for public office in 2013, this time for public advocate of New York City.
Then I left that school and I went to Cerritos College, which was in southern California; they had one of the best big band programs in the country at the time.
Jazz is the big brother of the blues. If a guy's playing blues like we play, he's in high school. When he starts playing jazz it's like going on to college, to a school of higher learning.
I have loved 'Countdown' for years. I always used to watch it when I got home from school. To be actually on the programme is a big challenge.
When I was fifteen, I dreamed of living in the big city, as many a young person does if he is artistic and sensitive. By 'artistic and sensitive' I mean short, skinny, unkissed, bad at sports, and carrying a C average in high school.
If you film a little boy going to school, the big event in that boy's day and all the classmates' and teachers' day is you being there filming, not the school.
My folks ain't graduated from high school or nothing like that, so we always had to struggle in the family - and I come from a big family.
As a youth, I and most of the other smarter kids in school got picked on by bullies. I was a big guy - even at a young age - and would take the beatings for my friends, who were often smaller and scrawnier.
I don't wear the see-through shirts or anything too glittery. I come from that '90s school of rap. Fitted caps, because I got a big head, so snapbacks don't fit me right.
I had a normal upbringing and went to public school. If I ever, even for a second, started getting a big head, I was brought back to reality pretty quickly. I was working full time and still had to fight for a cell phone.
I sort of knew very early on that I wanted to be a writer. Even in high school, I was a big movie buff, very much into TV shows, and would critique them.
I was a big shot in high school - big into social events and at the dramatic society - and I always had trouble in school. Not because I was a dummy, but I was always busy being the Jackson Heights clown.
Remember, I'm the kind of kid who used to get stuffed into a locker by school bullies. I've never felt like I'm a big star at any level of my life.
Theater school is essentially like training. It's boot camp. It's like an academy to put you through all these different situations that sometimes are more extreme than what you'll come across in the field. But now you're emotionally prepared for it so that when it does happen, it's not a big surprise.
One of the perks of growing up, but also one of the biggest challenges, is making decisions about the future. Deciding what kind of job you want, whether you want to finish school, or whether you want to go to university are huge choices to make.
I think my biggest mistake was deciding not to go to law school directly after I graduated from college.
I think, from every actor I've ever spoken to, they say the biggest thing they regret from life is not finishing school.
My stepdad provided me with an amazing childhood. I played outside like a normal kid, I rode my bike, I walked to school, but the happiest times were when I was acting.
I didn't know I was poor, growing up, because everyone was in the same boat. I couldn't have bikes. It never really bothered me, but I could have any book. I loved school; I loved learning. Yeah, I never cared for possessions. I still don't, really.
