Every time I want to impress someone about samples and hip-hop, I play 'Portrait of Tracy.' It's one of the greatest bass players ever doing a whole composition with only the two harmonics of electric bass; then a three-second loop in it became every great R&B song in five-year intervals.
When you accept a role in a pilot, you automatically sign up for five years. You think it's scary to walk down the aisle? Try signing a five-year contract for a show you may not want to be part of down the road.
When restaurants start to mature - and usually the five-year time is the time when the restaurant starts to settle in and have its own personality - your job is to grow it.
One of the towering people in this industry said, why don't you go and make a five-year contract with somebody, make yourself several million dollars and put it away, then go and do whatever you want, work for public TV if you want.
I've never been someone that's had a five-year plan, or a three-year plan. That just seems to lead to a lot of disappointment, and doesn't give you the chance to be flexible.
Americans have learned to trust free markets. Republican or Democrat, we believe the unimpeded exchange of goods and services will yield better solutions than five-year plans set by even the most well-meaning public servants.
Indeed, the FHA was born out of the Great Depression, which was also caused in significant part by a foreclosure crisis. Mortgages in the early 1930s were mostly three- to five-year 'bullet' loans, which did not amortize and were due in full at maturity.
Enrollment in colleges, especially black colleges, across the country increased tremendously during the five-year run of 'A Different World,' and I don't think you could have a better legacy than that.
The one thing that I've learned is that people don't change. Each new generation has the same stuff that the last one did. It's one of those things where jazz kind of works in five-year cycles.
Americans are so direct. They'd ask me, 'What's your five-year plan? Do you have a five-year plan?' I don't know what I'm having for my tea tonight let alone a five-year plan.