“I’m not somebody that’s like, ‘Things are supposed to happen or there’s a higher power.’ I’m very much not that kind of person. But I do believe that [my] injury happened for a reason. And it’s because I wasn’t dealing with grief.”
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“It’s so funny you mention rules. We have an inside baseball joke about the rules as we see them. And the rules apply in all cases to what you’re saying about being professional and having standards. But also the rules in our world apply this way: If your dad—who I know very well—said to me, ‘I want to get back out of retirement and I need a place to record something.’ I’d say, ‘It’s yours.’ Or if someone is out of work and needs a guy to talk to, or a gal to talk to, needs some kind of advice, it’s done. That’s the rule. You play by that rule your whole life. Because people did that for me.”
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“Being in love is discovering a part of yourself through someone else. According to my husband, we have this agreement where we’re the only people we’ve ever loved, we have no past. [Laughter] And that kind of works for us. But the truth is any time you feel like, or I have—I won’t speak for everybody—I have felt like I was in love—and there’s all kinds of love too, right? There’s the friendship, there’s family. And let’s be real, even [with] family, there are people that you love and connect with more than others, right. But that always resonated or burned something within me because I was discovering something about myself in that person. I also think that when people break up it’s really that tragic. It’s because you’re breaking up with a part of yourself that you identified in someone. Whether it’s something you aspired to or even sometimes you’re attracted to the self-justification, the negativity. Relationships [can be] toxic. You don’t always fall in love with the people you’re supposed to fall in love with. But I think it’s because somebody mirrors something to you. Whether it’s the promise of it or the actuality of it, you see something reflect back.”
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"Art happens no matter what. If you are going to stifle music education, if you're going to try to keep black people from having music education, you're just going to fuck yourself later on. And Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar are going to fucking make you look like an asshole. And sound like an asshole when you question what they're doing on stage. I love that, I'm so entertained by that. But the white male, right now—with the #MeToo Movement, with Black Lives Matter, with our rampant inequality,—needs to have its own awakening. What happens when I think of Robin Williams, when I think of Chris Cornell, when I think of Scott Weiland, being white men, there are a couple steps I need to do to be a hero and it's not that hard. That takes nothing away from their beauty, but there are a lot of white men in despair because we've been sold this automatic thing that's becoming less automatic. The worst of us are having a horrible back lash to that. We have to admit that mens' lies have been fodder for rich men for millennia. We're told that we're the ones who... 'Oh there's some bad guys in a building at Nakatomi Plaza. You just need one guy with a gun and no shoes and the whole problem will be solved.' Great movie, but I grew up thinking, 'If I'm struggling, if my feet are bleeding, and if I persevere, I can do it all alone and I don't need any help. My vulnerability is only my own.' That whole thing is just a lie to get men to give up their lives or to give up their empathy or to hold on to the idea that they deserve everything eventually. We need to have a course correction on that."
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"Being able to be vulnerable with my partner and open myself up, which is difficult for me, to be honest. It's really difficult to discuss certain things, to open myself up to criticism, to change in partnership with someone. That's a big part of love for us. Something, like I said, I struggle with, I'm not good at, but I need to commit to being better at it. It's something I'm not good at necessarily, but because I love my my wife, I'm willing to become better at it."
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“There’s that phrase, ‘If you love something, set it free.’ I think that’s a principle that’s really difficult for everyone. Myself included. But it is something that I come back to sometimes. If you love something, you’re not trying to possess it or control it. That being said, I do think a lot of people are afraid of love and afraid of being vulnerable. Personally I think of being 'in love' as being willing to be radically open and radically vulnerable. I don’t really know another way to be. I usually try to demonstrate that to a partner. Being honest and open and sharing your emotions and sharing your spaces and sharing power.”
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"Realizing in life, there’s racism that exists. There are all these different systems of oppression. And then realizing when you come to terms with—I remember when I was younger, way younger, I thought maybe some things were bad, but my personal belief is that we live in a system, multiple layers of systems that benefit a few. There’s elite and the rest of us. I had to come to terms with realizing that what I wanted to do in my life was to fight back against those systems or at least create conditions for people to thrive no matter who they are. This is what I want to do with my life. And committing to that and guiding my life in a way to do that."
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"When your days are done, did you do anything? There's this thing in your head and you have to get it out on the paper. So the inertia of...when all is said and done, did you do it? Did you do it? If not, for me, 'Oh God, I failed.' But then there's the everyday inertia. Did I get to the drawing table today? Did I get to the computer and write something today? The inertia of...you have all these other responsibilities to take care of, you have all these other tasks to get done, you have your own issues that you fight. A lot of people wait for motivation to show up in the room. It's never going to. You just have to do the work. And inertia wants to tell you no."
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"To me, the thing that struck me the most from the very earliest days at GrubStreet, really from our very first students when I really didn’t know what we were doing, people were so moved and transformed by just being together in a classroom and sharing work, which is a very hard and vulnerable thing to do, that they believed in each other and they believed in those of us teaching in those early classes, and they were always ready to step up and give us advice or feedback or help out so when GrubStreet officially became a non-profit, from the student body came our first board of directors. They helped with filling out the crazy and byzantine 501c3 paperwork and on and on. At every single stage of our development as an organization people have presented themselves showing up with just what we need at that moment. That’s about being as clear as you can be about the values and the vision and the mission.
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"You can’t change the world, but you can make aspects of it move in the direction you want to. Through PR you have access to—let’s say if I was a writer for a publication, I’d only be able to write for that publication and my editor would be my boss, but working in PR, I have access to every publication that exists, and can get stories of things that I want in the world out there to shift the whole story. Then I have access to hundreds of millions of people as opposed to the maybe hundreds of thousands that one outlet would have. That’s why you have to be super careful of what you’re putting out there because you don’t want to make something that hurts people."
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"If we all sit back and think about our creative heroes—musically, artistically, painters, sculptors—a lot of them aren’t that happy in their lives and they’re filled with angst and there’s tragedy, and I’m constantly thinking, 'Do I need more tragedy in my life to create the kind of brilliance that I want to leave that legacy?' And then you think, 'Does it matter to van Gogh, now that he’s dead, that he’s a hero to so many people when he was so miserable in his life?' So the big question I have is: Is it better to be creating things that people eventually think are brilliant, but you personally, during your life, are not that happy? Or is it better to be stoked every day and wake up—I know a lot of people who I would describe as smart, but simple…where they’re interesting, they’re good people, but they don’t think about the world as deeply as I do and because of that, I think they’re happier. I have a tremendous amount of envy for them."
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"I’ve never had to worry about not being responsible enough or not being driven enough. That’s also why I excel in the kitchen…I respond well to hierarchy. Whether it’s gymnastics or martial arts or whatever, I love learning basics, I love training basics, and doing my very best with those, and then every day you just push harder, faster, better, and things progress naturally that way. The kitchen is the same way. I grew up in restaurants that were chef-owned and I didn’t realize what an impact that would have on me at the time. Being the chef-owner of a restaurant now, I followed suit. It’s a huge sacrifice and a gigantic commitment for sure. That can be very overwhelming and definitely scary, but even then…it’s not smart to not be scared of anything. It’s not smart to not be daunted at times. But at the same time, you shouldn’t let it overwhelm you. That won’t get you anywhere. So I’ve been worried about what’s going to happen, but those times have been when I reminded myself about what’s important and then you, moment by moment, keep on going.
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"Nothing’s going to get handed to you. You need to show that you have a talent, first of all, obviously, but the work ethic that goes behind it as well. I worked full-time at a bakery after I graduated college and on my off days, I would come in [to the tattoo shop] and clean because [the shop owner], right off the bat, told me, 'I’m not going to offer you an apprenticeship.' So I did it thinking that it would just be a good experience and she would give me a good recommendation down the road. So after a few months of doing that, she offered me an apprenticeship. And I had no idea that was coming. I was thinking, 'She hates me, she’s not going to give me anything.' I had absolutely zero idea. I cried. "
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"Failure is giving up when you shouldn’t give up. You have to know when to give up. There are certain projects that I’ve worked on that I think, 'It’s OK if I don’t finish this, it’s OK if I put this aside. I’ve still learned something even if it’s not done and other people won’t read it.' But if I gave up on something just because it was hard or because I was frustrated with it or if I didn’t give it enough time or focus and then I give up on it, that’s failure. If you work really really hard and something doesn’t work out, you still learn something from it. If you give up or you feel like you failed, but it’s really just because you didn’t give it your all, then that’s failure."
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