A Quote by Billy Connolly
I’ve come in and out of America for… well, I’ve lived here for 15 years. And I’ve played here for nearly 30 years. On and off. But I’ve always played to my fan base. And I can come and do two or three nights in New York or two or three nights in L.A., and all that. But when I go away, nobody knows I’ve been gone. You know, I don’t get reviewed or anything like that. So that’s why I’ve come back and done a longer time in a smaller place, in New York. It’s always the people who live here that get a chance to know me.
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You know, my first nine years I only played for two teams, Chicago and New York. And the only reason I got traded from New York was the 2010 free agency period, when they had a chance to sign LeBron and D-Wade and that whole class, and I understood that. But from there it's kind of been a roller coaster.
I live in L.A. so I don't get to see much theatre anymore. They have a lot of touring shows but it's not like New York - I lived in New York for 15 years and you can walk out on the street and there's something to see.
I engage with New York and America but my parents pretty much hang out in this radius of Long Island where their friends are and where their work is. That's why you have people who have lived in New York for like 20, 30 years who don't speak English. They just live in a Chinese community or an Indian community. More than anywhere you'll find that in Queens.
I lived in Japan for eight years before moving to New York, but I was looking forward to a place like America to change my opinion on things and force me to come up with new perspectives.
A few people have come back to me and said, "Thanks for giving me nightmares for the last few nights!" I say to them, "Well, now you know what I've been going through for the last three years!"
Don't get me wrong; it's not like I didn't go out and have fun. But there's been a lot of players that come to New York and get caught up in the lifestyle, and before you know it, they're sent away to another team because it affected their performance.
New York was always more expensive than any other place in the United States, but you could live in New York - and by New York, I mean Manhattan. Brooklyn was the borough of grandparents. We didn't live well. We lived in these horrible places. But you could live in New York. And you didn't have to think about money every second.
That's what I'm doing here, throw out New York and California, Donald Trump wins the popular vote by nearly three million votes. But you can't throw out New York and California. This is exactly why we have the Electoral College. Had there been no Electoral College and had the election be defined by the popular vote, I guarantee you that the two states where the candidates would have been all the time are New York and California. There would have been some time in Texas and they would have ignored the vast majority of people in the country.
You can go anywhere in New York. There's always something to do in New York. There's always a place to eat no matter what time it is. There's always a place to work, a place to drink. It's conducive to my lifestyle. I don't know how to drive a car, so I like to be able to walk places.
For the three years I lived in New York leading up to moving out to Los Angeles for 'Mad Men,' I was an office temp at Ernst & Young in Times Square. That's about as desk-jobby as it can get. There was a lot of, 'Go two floors up and make a copy of this and then bring it to me.'
I've been back in New York a year and a half now. Before that I was on the West Coast for five years. There's no comparison between the two. You hear things in New York you don't hear anywhere else. Unless these guys go out. Quite a few make it out to the Coast. Of course, you can't stay in New York for ever. You have to move.
You think about when I went to Miami. I played as a freshman, I go in and compete to be a starter, I tear my ACL. Come back, I start, I get off to a good couple of games and I get hurt again. You hear everybody saying, 'Oh, he's done.' I get drafted in the third round. People still said I got drafted too high, saying I'll only play three years.
New York has always been a city of change and a city about change, and it is a back-leading development. Nobody's going to want to come to New York if it looks like another strip mall.
I live in New York, but I am always delighted to come to Europe because I am European and grew up here until I was 20. I am not only Italian, I am partly Swedish. When my parents divorced, I was three years old and went to live in Paris... when I am offered a film in Europe, I come with great enthusiasm!
So I've done my fair share of theater. I have also been very fortunate in that I've been able to come to New York two or three times a year just to see as many shows as possible. I think the live theater culture here is incredible.
You're supported by everything in New York if you want to be a performing artist. You come here, you can change your name. You leave home, you come here, you're severed from family obligations - the old identity drops away as soon as you come to New York because you're coming to New York, if you're an artist, to be someone else.
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