It was June 4, 1979, the first time I went on stage. I didn't know I could do it but I knew I couldn't not do it. I quit everything in my life and this was the one thing I couldn't quit.

I didn't come from a background where I saw a lot of loving couples. All my aunts and uncles were either split up or fighting all the time. The only healthy relationships I saw were on TV.

When things are bad, it's the best time to reinvent yourself.

It's not even about black and white anymore, because so many people are from mixed backgrounds and mixed ethnicities, and it's just a great time to be able to pull all that together.

No particular race is the enemy. Ignorance is the enemy.

When I was 10 there wasnt trampolines and cartoon charaters, I never went to Chuck E Cheese! My mom said 'You wanna see a mouse pull the refrigerator Out!'

Whoever is my relative, I will not be nice to them.

We're Mexi-cans not Mexi-can'ts.

It's a great day in America when white people, black people and Latinos can all come together and pick on another minority.

I'm a big fan of reality shows. I thought the first one, Dukes of Hazzard, captured white people perfectly.

Y'know, if those pews reclined, and the priests gave the Raiders scores I'd go to church every Sunday.

From history books you should at best believe just the punctuation. The rest is uncertain, incomplete, distorted, exaggerated or even fabricated.

To many people fall short of their goals because they mistakenly believe that losing is just another comfortable place to sit.

My character is beyond your every thought, and I'm different from your every character.

My doctor said I look like a million dollars - green and wrinkled.

In the EU you have half a billion people who share a common belief in democracy, in rights, in the kind of economic life we want.

I'll just immediately automatically, without even thinking, check my phone. And it feels like the same little bit of my brain is being - the synapses are lighting up when I do that.

Punk came along and grunge made guitar solos uncool.

All composite things decay. Strive diligently.

As far as ideas about book design: I have plenty. But I also try and let people do their jobs.

When you're a working writer, sooner or later friends and acquaintances will get you alone and confide that they, too, have a book in them.