When I first arrived in the country, I really didn't speak much of the language. I knew two words coming here, and they were 'Hello' and 'Shut up.'

When I was coming to this country, I heard about its promises.

My family called me the 'why kid' growing up. I always needed to know why something is happening, why I had to do something, why whatever.

Hope will be found by understanding that diversity is the essence of the American Dream and why we need each other to fulfill it.

I started to write in about 1950; I was thirty-five at the time; there didn't seem to be any strong motivation. I simply was endeavoring to put down in a more or less straightforward journalistic style something about my experiences with addiction and addicts.

When I began to choreograph and find my way pulling other artists' dreams out and changing music in a visual way, there was still a part of me that had something more to say. There was still a desire to rock a stage and ultimately perform the eight count of my dream, but there was a lot of insecurity there.

So I just had to step up how I was doing it and the moment that I stepped up and the moment I focused all my energy on that is when things started to happen. So there's a direct relationship between my inspiration and my output.

Sometimes I'll even have a dream of the trick I want to do, and I'll land it perfectly. And then I know. I'm like, 'OK, I'm ready. I want to do this trick.' But it takes so much courage.