When the doors to television were opened to me, that was quite a surprise. It's been such a gift that there was so much TV and independent film happening in New York that I could be a part of. There was something to satiate my desire to be artistic and creative, especially when it wasn't in the way I originally thought it was going to be.
Four years ago, I promised to end the war in Iraq. We did. I promised to refocus on the terrorists who actually attacked us on 9/11. We have. We've blunted the Taliban's momentum in Afghanistan, and in 2014, our longest war will be over. A new tower rises above the New York skyline, al Qaeda is on the path to defeat, and Osama bin Laden is dead.
My grandfather lived to be 96 years old. He was born in a town outside of Salerno in Southern Italy. He came to New York when he was 20. He lived in the States from age 20 to 96, but he brought his culture with him, he brought his food with him, he brought his language with him, he never spoke a word of English.
New York is a sucked orange. All conversation is at an end, when we have discharged ourselves of a dozen personalities, domestic or imported, which make up our American existence.
I loved New York — every inch of it. It was a little bit scary at that time, but still, the excitement was so strong — visually and intellectually. It was like a monster.
A very awkward situation occurs often in New York City when you are walking down a relatively empty sidewalk and there happens to be a person walking right next to you in the same direction as you at the exact same pace as you. I never know whether to pass or draft. It becomes sort of a strange competition.
I spent a lot of time standing on street corners [of New York City] talking to local residents. I spent time in bookstores and galleries. But most of the time, I really did not have much to do.
The wireless telegraph is not difficult to understand. The ordinary telegraph is like a very long cat. You pull the tail in New York, and it meows in Los Angeles. The wireless is the same, only without the cat.
In America, people think being South Asian is still kind of exotic. When you go outside New York and Chicago and L.A., there are people who have never tried Indian food... they've never even tasted it!
The first time that I came to New York to work properly was the mid-'80s, but I was doing eight shows a week. You have no life. Going to a punk rock club - or whatever the music was at that time - would not have been on my agenda.
The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.
Tradition does not mean a dead town; it does not mean that the living are dead but that the dead are alive. It means that it still matters what Penn did two hundred years ago or what Franklin did a hundred years ago; I never could feel in New York that it mattered what anybody did an hour ago.
I guess my goal is to design my own walker. The walkers with the big tennis balls, no one wants to use those. I would rather crawl down the street in New York City than use those.