I've never really felt like a veteran. I've never felt like the guy who's like, 'OK, everyone needs to look up to me and respect me.' I've always just been one of the guys that people are excited to get in the ring with. That's all I want.
For me, the NFL is the thing that's always been, kind of somewhat like the Heisman, it's been a dream as a kid to be able to have an opportunity to even be talked about being able to play in the NFL.
I never had a backup plan. I felt like if I had a backup plan, it was like saying to the universe that I didn't believe in myself.
I've always felt like an outsider as a woman. I've never really felt wholly comfortable in a women's world or woman's things. I've never been conventionally pretty or thin or girly-girl. Never felt dateable. All I've seen on TV has never felt like mine.
I did my first professional play at 11, and there was really nothing else I ever dreamed of doing. I felt so fortunate that I knew at the age of like, 12, like this is all I want to do for the rest of my life; that's the only play. There's no backup plan. My mom wanted me to go to school and have a backup plan. I'm like 'No, this is the only plan.'
I felt like I was a writer, and I just thought filmmaking was the best way for me to express that, because it allows me to embrace the visual world that I love. It's allows me to interact with people, to be more social than fiction or poetry, and it felt like the right way for me to tell the stories that felt pressing to me.
I never got in a conflict. I didn't want Don Shula to say a word to me at all. My play emphasized that. He couldn't get me for anything or whatever. After that we were ok. I just didn't like the way they used me at the end of the 1963 season going in 1964. I felt that they played games with me.
I definitely had to be talked into 'American Pie: Reunion.' I was hesitant because I'm on a show, and I felt, 'I'm happy. I've got my family.' But then I met the directors, who also wrote it, and once I read the script, I was like, 'OK, sign me up.'
I always say I never felt 'latched' to a gender. I just kind of always felt like myself, and I never felt like I had to do certain things or be a certain way to fit into a certain mold.
Nas always been my favorite rapper, but 50 Cent, he changed my way of thinking about music 'cause he was so detailed in his music, I knew that wasn't lying. I never felt Tupac that way; I never felt Biggie that way. I love Nas music, but I never felt and believed like, 'This is for real.' 'Cause I grew up that gangsta lifestyle.
I really just wanted to be a writer, but people tell you, 'You should have a backup career,' so I thought, 'OK, I'll act.' That was the foolishness of my vision for my life - that my backup career would be completely undependable.
I like to think of my work and the way people approach it in the same way people approach a Lichtenstein painting. You can write a one-hundred-page dissertation about why he used comics. Or it could be like, 'This is cute!'
It's like, symbolic language, the way that people approach dense poetry... it always bugs me, because that approach suggests that it's like a mystery novel, and that if you can put together the clues, you can come up with one singular answer.
I felt that everyone had the same sentiments when it came to love that I did. I felt like if you really cared for somebody, then that was it. It never occurred to me that people could lie about the way they felt about you. I had to learn that the hard way.
I've never felt that way. I've never felt like a looser. You can't get what you want if you feel like it's you against the world. You'll never get anywhere with negativity. I make my own opportunities I don't feel like everything is against me.
I'm in a unique situation. I'm 5-foot-6, 175 pounds, so I wouldn't say people are super afraid of me. I live a normal life. I don't walk into a room and everybody looks at me and says, "He plays for the Cleveland Browns" or "He's an NFL superstar" - that doesn't happen. I go under the radar. Most people don't realize who I am until I tell them. So it's not like my life has changed since I've been in the NFL or people treat me any different.