When people laugh at your institutions and convince you that you have to adopt theirs - adopt their dress, adopt their taste in food - you are a prisoner to those people.
I think in this world and this industry, if you let it, it does. And I feel that the people who don't have good friends and family around them are the ones who get a little funny. But I'm very lucky. I have good friends and good family and if I ever stepped out of line, my mom would take me down!
As far as the girls in my grade, it was always kind of an on-and-off thing. When all this came up, it was kind of hard. My guy friends and my family friends have been so amazing and supportive.
I've never had a divorce, but I've seen so many of my friends, my sister, my family go through that stuff, so I try to write for the people that can't write about it. I take on their sorrow, so I'm able to kind of express it, or their joy.
My family wasn't involved in the college. They were more of just your 'white trash' kind of family. And so I have that kind of background, but I always kind of aspired to be something else, and I made a lot of different friends over the years that were passing through.
You know that family is going to be there for you no matter what. My dad gave me a freakin' kidney! But it's also the families that you create outside of your family. And you really find out what kind of people you're friends with.
I tend to listen to my friends and family empathetically, and I try to help work through their problems from the inside. I try to adopt their thinking.
It's interesting, a lot of my friends and family thought that was the moment I kind of showed everyone my humor; the silly side of me that friends and family know, so that could be what people were responding to. I have a big sense of humor, and people who know me know that silly side of me, so moving forward, I think it gives me the freedom and confidence to do more of that.
It sucks being judged by the world instead of your close friends or family. I try to just realise that the only people who matter are my family and friends.
I miss friends and family. If it weren't for visits from old friends and other African Americans I meet who come to Cuba, I'd probably be in some kind of time warp.
Due to my serious kind of roles, people - apart from my close friends and family - did not know the real me.
'The Wonder Years' family was the kind where everything seemed to be bubbling and simmering with the occasional explosion. There were a lot of things that went unsaid in that family. In my family, everything is said - on the surface, you scream and yell about it, and three minutes later, you're all friends.
Obviously I ask my family and loved ones for advice here and there, but I kind of have a rule with the people I love that surround me - close family and close friends - that unless I ask for it, I don't really want advice thrown out.
Contemporary families can be made in many ways. You might step up when relatives or friends are unable to meet their obligation to their children. You might marry someone who is already a parent. Or you might, as in my case, yearn to create a family and decide to adopt.
My iPhone stays on. All my friends and family know that I hate the phone, so no one calls me on it. I just use it to play Words With Friends and take pictures of cute shoes.
I'm not one of the guys in the league for the fame. I'm here so I can take of my family, my mom, my friends and take care of myself.