I was always a clown. In the eighth grade I won a city speech contest by doing an Eddie Murphy routine. I'm no good at public speaking, but if I can assume a role and speak as that person, then I'm fine. When I had to give a book report, I always did it in character.

When I first started the show, I was known as the 'cop nerd.' I was in the 9th Precinct in the East Village every day. I'd be at work wearing a fake bulletproof vest with foam in it, then I'd leave and put on a real one to ride around with these guys.

All kids, when they go to school, are pretty good artists and dancers and singers and poets. All that gets buried, basically through being educated, or brainwashed.

I wish I could have known earlier that you have all the time you'll need right up to the day you die.

The whole Disney thing is really interesting, in a way, how that's so permeated life and the world and the planet.

We're all kind of basically involved in the same thing, putting up a blank of some kind and filling it in.

I think being an artist, or just being creative, or imaginative, or aware, where I think everybody starts out, and by about the age of 10, that's been pretty effectively whipped out by education.

I'm just a landscape painter. I look out the window and I see what's going on, and I paint it. While I'm painting it, I also write thoughts about what I see going on out there.

I've been attracted to imagery and occasionally I've drawn from it, but I never thought I'd be painting these paintings. I didn't have any desire to. I didn't think there was any reason to.

Irish is the prominent nationality in the family, but beyond that, I really don't know. I see a lot of artistic or creative influence coming through on my mother's side.

It's like there are all these languages available, especially in terms of image. Why confine yourself to only English? There's all these languages and possibilities and concepts to speak or communicate with.