When I'm writing, I won't know whodunnit until maybe two thirds of the way through. Until then, I know as little as my detective. I just make it up as I go along. It's nerve-wracking, actually. You'll be half through and not know your conclusion. You worry one of these days the ending won't come. I'll be left with only two-thirds of a novel.
Writing is frustration - it's daily frustration, not to mention humiliation. It's just like baseball: you fail two-thirds of the time.
You get into sports with the idea that you want to win. If you aren't trying to win, what's the point in being involved? Once you do get involved, you realize the team draws so much from the community, and it would be nothing without the support of it. You've got to give back. It needs to be a two-way street.
If you represent our country, it should represent us. It's supposed to be a two-way thing, but we live and we learn, and it's getting better.
You get these Satanists types that don't believe in God. OK, so you realize you don't get Satan if you don't get God, right? Or atheists that want to believe in ghosts. Wait, wait, wait. You can't have a two-way go on that. You want to be agnostic, be an atheist, fine. But you don't bring ghosts along with you.
You want to work with people you are excited about and they are excited about you. It's a two-way street.
It can get a little costly if you try and leave it until then to write songs. But you're writing all the time. You're collecting songs. I've had songs that have been collected over a two-year period for my next record.
What I have against M.B.A.s is the assumption that you come out of a two-year program probably never having been a manager - at least for full-time younger people M.B.A. programs - and assume you are ready to manage.
I have a two-year-old at home, and my whole life is - besides revolved around keeping this little person alive, just watching them on the stairs and eating food and everything of every minute of every day - you plan what time you're going to bed so that you can be your best self first thing in the morning.
Sometimes, you'll watch the news and you'll see two-year-old boys in South Africa, wearing 'Spider-Man' t-shirts. It's such a global phenomenon.
I really try to focus on organizations, twofold, one that help people and/or beings that don't have other means of help. Particularly if they're hospitalized children, sick children, children that don't have homes, children that can't go to school, you know that's the future of this country and the future of this planet.
Tying money up for 40 years doesn't sound appealing when you are young.
Ninety percent of people's nightmares is standing in front of 1,000 people. Did you know that? And having to speak. You would have thought it would have been a madman tying you up and taking your eyes out.
What our kids learn to do is fight. So when you watch a Devin Booker, you look at Tyler Ulis - they fight.
On Disney, we stick to the script. But you go to the 'Grown Ups set' and it's completely different. Same thing with Tyler Perry - it's nothing but ad-libbing.
As a filmmaker you get typecast just as much as an actor does, so I'm trapped in a genre that I love, but I'm trapped in it!
Nobody will tell you that you're typecast until your films aren't working; if it's working, they'll call it your 'zone.'
You are still lucky - you have a certain type of people who keep buying your music - but then you can get typecast and have to keep making that same music, and you can change only slightly. It's risky to bounce around and change your type of music.
I think it's the actor's job - when you think of being typecast or getting out of the shadow of whatever you've had success in - it's up to you as an actor. The industry will always want to hire you for what you were successful in last and what made money. But you can say no to that and look for other parts.
If I had my choice, I would be writing by typewriter. I worked on newspapers for 10 years. I typed with the touch system, and unfortunately, you can't keep typewriters going today. You have to take the ribbons back to be re-inked. You have to - it's a horrible search to try to find missing parts. So I went to the computer.
