I didn't understand the culture and what Starbucks was really about. It wasn't a coffee shop. It was really a way of life... we suffer from thinking that since we have it in New York, or it won't work in New York, that it won't work some other place. That's a discipline we keep trying to improve.
I'll be in, like, Starbucks or something and I'll say my order and someone will snap their head around and go, 'Whaat, Alaska?! Hieeee!' I find it nice because I can be alone in a strange city where I don't know where I am, and then if a fan runs into me I feel like I am among friends and family.
Insurance companies pay big bucks for procedures but next to nothing for patient consultations and preventive medicine, which is what most medicine is.
It is kind of weird to walk into a Starbucks and have somebody know your name. But normal-day life really hasn't changed that much. There's just a lot more eyes on you on social media.
People keep saying I'm westernizing Chinese food. No I'm not. McDonald's, KFC, Starbucks, have done it big time, way before me.
I moved to Madrid with 200 bucks in my pocket to see what was going to happen. Of course, I didn't know that 200 euros was nothing, because in Cuba, 200 was a lot, and the money I had been saving from my movies.
I went to USC for writing. I was judgmental of actors and their Starbucks and fancy cars.
I worked in a Starbucks that wasn't very popular - before the big coffee boom in London. My boss didn't take kindly to my incessant sitting. I was like, 'Look, I've dusted everything, the stockroom is all figured out... I would rather sit now so I have the energy when a customer does come in.'
In my junior high and high school days, I would just pick up a mower and go mow the neighbor's grass and make an extra 30 bucks.
If you're going to create a character, the tools you use to make that character 'real' are the lives you see around you. The people you listen to on the street. The emotions you see on faces and bodies while you're sitting... in a Starbucks, watching the world go by.
