It's easy to get people to sing along to cover songs, but when it's your song, it's the coolest.
Ten comics can say the same joke, and I'm the one who gets called a thief.
My films, no one else will do.
Once you put songs out, they're not yours anymore. They're everyone else's.
I'm very comfortable singing myself, first of all. Secondly, there's a certain disconnect when you write the song and you have someone else sing it for you. And it's kind of like a fakeness about it.
I'm rather kind of old school, thinking that when an artist does his work, it's no longer his... I just see what people make of it.
Making movies is a very different experience in a lot of ways. It's difficult when you're used to owning the copyright and having a landlord's possessory rights - I rent my plays to the companies that do them and, if I'm upset, I can pull the play. But the only two directors I've worked with are pretty great.
Certainly, my many years working in the comics industry, creating products that I do not own, has made me rather fierce on the subject of giving up rights.
I'm one of those artists that people take my music without my consent. People love to snatch my music and do things on their own. You got people that put me on beats I never rapped on. I just feel that it's a bad thing.
Beyond a certain point, the music isn't mine anymore. It's yours.
After my years in Hollywood, I got tired of apologizing for work that really wasn't mine to begin with.
On one level, all of the characters in 'Game of Thrones' grow out of George R.R. Martin's imagination. Therefore they are his. As long as they are in the novels they are his. But the moment they step forth onto the TV screen, they become filtered through the showrunners. In a business sense, it's the same way with comics.
At the end of the day, I don't release any records that I'm not proud to put my name on. I never got to that point.
Other people singing my songs is something that I've never been casual about. I've always been very touched by it and I always go into immediate critical suspension.
I have a very Socratic approach - I pummel the designers with questions, so when I get them to step back from the work and look at it with me, they'll eventually see what I see, coming to it fresh and unencumbered. That's always very gratifying because they feel a responsibility and an ownership of a solution.
When people who are songwriters say 'That's my property and if you give it away for free then I'll lose my incentive,' then, well, good riddance.
It's one thing if you write a song and somebody else sings it because you give the OK. But if your voice is on something and you don't get the credit, it's kind of hard.
It's usually very, very hard for me to pick up a script that was written and try and see myself as a part of that, especially when you're used to performing all your own material. It's OK with drama, I like being handed great material but I think with comedy it's far more personal and probably a lot harder for me to find a fit.
When a writer makes something, it's theirs forever. That is the magic for me.
I think a lot of people are very good, but I don't think anybody could do my rhythm. I was thinking, "If you want my rhythm" - and when I was writing, I was writing them for myself - "why am I watching another actor doing what I should be doing?" It was just a really unpleasant experience.
Whenever I've done jobs, whether it's an acting job or writing job, there's an aspect of it that feels like you help build your piece of it, and then you watch as someone takes it, and they finish building it.
At the age of eight, I discovered that I could write songs. My dad used to take them to the notary and register them so that nobody could steal them from me.
No actor wants to play someone else's performance.
When I write songs for myself it's really personal and I just can't have someone else singing it.
Songwriters write songs, but they really belong to the listener.
