On draft day, I wasn't really nervous at all. Then you turn on the draft, the first five picks go by, and then you still thinking, 'Oh man, I don't know where I'm going to go.' It's really just, by the time draft hits, that's when you get nervous.
The reason we are here is thinking, 'What can we do to make this club a better club?' I don't want the guys to think about what the club can do for them.
You work every day with your player development, try to improve through the draft, you have free agency and you have trades. I think you have to be very aggressive in each area. Sitting back and waiting sometimes is not a good thing.
The other day, the way people [do] who are approaching their 80th birthday, I was thinking about all the last business - funerals and where do you want to be buried - and I thought if anything were to be inscribed on my tombstone, I said let it be that.
I don't think you think of your audience as much as you think, when you're revising, how it holds together. I mean I think the first draft is art, and the second draft, third, fourth draft is craft. Putting it together so that it has a good pattern.
When my son said, "I can't stop thinking about girls," I said, "That's not gonna stop. Congratulations. You're in the club. From now until the day you die, one way or another you'll be thinking about girls.
I see myself as the No. 1 player in the draft, but it is what it is. You can just take it day-by-day, put in the work, and the draft is going to be the outcome of whatever the draft is.
I didn't know there was an NBA draft. But in my mind, I was always telling myself, one day, 'I'm going to be in professional basketball.' And I believed it. One day, I will. I believe this every day. I think about this every day. I was going to do whatever I had to do to be there. And it comes true.
When I'm shaving, I'm thinking about what I need to accomplish that day. If it's game day, I'm thinking about schemes, thinking about my matchup for that game. If it's practice, I'm thinking about what film we're going to watch. Or if it's a recovery day, I'm thinking of what body parts are aching and what I want to work on.
The way I see it, thinking about the position of the club during the swing is about the worst way to play golf. It makes you tight and defensive, which kills your natural speed and rhythm. Although there's obvious value to minding your technique, at best you'll play an OK round. Where's the fun in that?
Something I always tell students is, when you're writing something, you want to write the first draft and you want it to come out easily in the beginning. If you're afraid to say what you really have to say, you stammer. [...] You're judging yourself, you know, thinking about your listener. You're not thinking about what you're saying. And that same thing happens when you write.
People often say, 'I like your comics, even though I don't know enough math to get all of them,' as if it's some kind of club where they don't belong. But there's no club. There's just lots of people who are excited about thinking, learning, joking, and sometimes overanalyzing things.
To see professionals working hard every day, making a big commitment to the club with a desire to improve every day is something I want. That's the only way they can play with me.
Some writers find that they don't know their themes until they've finished the first draft (I am one). They then rewrite with an eye toward balancing on that tightrope: not too contrived, not too rambling; does what I'm saying about the world below me actually add up to anything? Other writers pay attention to these things as they write the first draft. Either way, an awareness of the macro and micro levels of theme can provide one more tool for thinking about what you should write, and how.
I don't think it's about playing and singing, to be honest. That seems like old news, you know? I wasn't thinking about that. I just think that's in my body now. Dancers don't think about their legs moving one way and their arms moving another. Over time, you incorporate that into your instrument.
If you're thinking about all the possibilities of your life, there are extreme negatives, which you hope don't happen, and extreme positives, which you just aren't willing to think about because you think you'll jinx it.