At a young age, I really wanted to make music and make my own sort of thing. I'm sure if it wasn't music, it would have been writing, or it would have been maybe painting. I just always had the drive to try and make something with my hands and to just pull something out of myself and shape it and see it in front of me, if that makes any sense.
I was thinking I would love to make something that is a successful film that everybody sees, but I wasn't thinking about the actual dollar amount. I just wanted to make a great film that people responded to. That's always a good ambition because you'll never totally hit it.
Sitting in the movie theater watching "Star Wars," I've never had an experience with any form of entertainment that was like that. It was almost spiritual. I couldn't believe that someone's mind created that. And, right, it felt like George Lucas had a piano that was playing my emotions, and he could go ahead and do whatever he wanted and make me lean forward if he wanted, or he could make me go oh, or he could make me hide my face.
I wanted the feel in these books to be like an epic fantasy, with kings, queens, dukes and court politics, but of course like what I was explaining before, about making the science make sense, you have to make the politics make sense, too.
I always wanted to write when I was a kid; it just never occurred to me that you could have a job that didn't involve any actual work.... I felt it would be fun to have a job like that where you could make stuff up and be irresponsible and get paid for it.
I knew that I was writing for an American audience and that if I sold foreign rights, they would retranslate the book to make it make sense to that language. But one thing that was really important to me was not to italicize any of the words in the languages that were in the stories, because I feel like those foreign words felt just as important and integral to the story as everything else, so I wanted it all to just exist as its own thing.
Sizing was also important to me; I wanted to make sure that nobody felt alienated or felt like they weren't thought about in the process of this brand. I wanted to make sure that everyone felt included, which brings us to the gender neutral pieces - the idea of wearing what you want and whatever makes you feel comfortable and confident. I think that's the overall feeling of the Daya collection.
I always wanted to make a song like 'Why' even before my second album. It was just something I always had in my mind. But when I got the beat from Havoc, it was like the perfect beat, I felt... I wanted to get some questions I thought everybody... felt like 'why?' to.
Nobody wanted to be in business with Death Row because, unfortunately, they felt there was an element there that could be dangerous. But I just knew they had great music and that they were a bunch of guys who wanted to make it out of the ghetto. That's something I can understand.
I needed more stuff that glowed so when the lights went out, you could actually see me the whole time. So I slowly built it from there. I wanted everything to glow. I want my hair to glow, I want my nails to glow, I want my eyes to glow, I want my lips to glow, you know?
As a coach, one thing that used to frustrate me was one player would make a bad decision, and that's all you would read about in the papers all over the country. We have so many athletes do so many wonderful things for other people, and you never read about it.
To ask for help does not make you weak. And that was something I felt after I was carjacked. I felt shame. I felt embarrassed. I felt weak about it. That's not the case at all. Once I did get help, I managed to overcome it and make something special with it, instead of not doing anything about it.
If I could just make Westerns for the rest of my life, that's all I would do. It's my favorite movie to make. There's something about being a cowboy.
There have been many, many paintings of Theseus and the Minotaur, as it is one of the more popular myths, so how could I make mine different and new? I decided it would be best to make the most dynamic painting I could. I wanted to capture the moment right before the Minotaur's horn was snapped.
That's right... I never felt a sense of superiority because I could see spirits. And I never once thought that I could make a living or help someone with it. I just longed for a life where I couldn't see them. And I finally got what I always wanted.
I was going through a time where I was like man I wanted all of my clothes to be totally understated and I would do pop color with hats from a line called Ale et Ange out of New york City. They created all these hats and I just thought they were super fresh and the only way that I could really get them across...I was just like, 'Let me make everything mute and just put on the hat.'