Growing up in Hampton, the face of science was brown like mine.

I knew a lot of black scientists, engineers, and mathematicians, and female mathematicians and engineers, women of all backgrounds. So this idea that anyone could be an engineer, a mathematician, or whatever, was something that I had grown up with and thought was really normal.

Our next-door neighbour taught physics at Hampton University. Our church abounded with mathematicians. Supersonics experts held leadership positions in my mother's sorority, and electrical engineers sat on the board of my parents' college alumni associations.

My dad worked at NASA his whole career; he's a research scientist.

Every time I tried writing my own songs, they would come out very country. I couldn't fight it, and the more I listened to country music, the more I loved it, and it just became very natural.

Comedy is like music - there are genres and styles for every taste. Katy Perry is there for people who like frothy pop music. Metallica is there for people who like head-banging metal. And Susan Boyle is there for... well, I don't who the hell is listening to that freak of nature, but that's not the point. In art, there's something for everybody.

At school, I always felt the art room was the place where you could sit and talk. It was a place of solace. I wasn't the best artist at school by a long shot; it was more the understanding and the support that came from that room.

Farber had a huge effect on me as a writer. I don't mean I write like him. Farber is, first of all, a great stylist, a great writer. Anyone can read Manny Farber's film criticism, whether that person is a novelist, a poet, another critic, a historian, and learn a lot about writing by reading him.