Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I met David Bowie when I was 14, and he became a hero to me - because he was an artist, and because he was a genius who had the time to be kind. I'd never met such an extraordinary artist before, and I haven't since - the world will be a greyer place without him.
Then I came up with this crazy idea just to walk out on the stage with no band at all and just start singing whatever came to mind. I actually fought the idea for a while because it seemed almost too radical, but it became obvious what I was supposed to be doing.
My idol growing up was Charlie Chaplin. I was obsessed with him. I mean, while other kids were watching Jim Carrey and the likes in the '90s, I was watching Charlie Chaplin films, because I was a bit of a geek. I became obsessed with this idea of physical comedy.
We have good examples of successful adaptation to rising sea levels. The Netherlands became a wealthy nation despite having one-third of its landmass below sea level, including areas a full 7m below sea level, as a result of the gradual sinking of its landscapes.
In our first decade, I interviewed about five thousand people in pursuit of the talent that would create our future. As our success grew, we became known across the four corners of finance not just for our outstanding returns, but also for our outstanding people.
I became a teacher all right. I wanted to become a teacher because I had a misconception about it. I didn't know that I'd be going into - when I first became a high school teacher in New York, that I'd be going into a battle zone, and no one prepared me for that.
When I first became interested in photography, I thought it was the whole cheese. My idea was to have it recognized as one of the fine arts. Today I don't give a hoot in hell about that. The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself.
It's been a long road. A humble Dearborn beginning. Secretary mom, dad teaching handicapped children. Working for what they had. Eventually, I moved to L.A. but, not good for me, I felt rejected. So I stopped acting and, needing to feel good inside, became a chef.
Mary Lasker was an entrepreneur; she was a socialite. She was kind of a legendary networker. She became interested in saying, 'Well, you know, if these diseases don't have political support we'll never conquer them.' And she made, really, cancer her special cause.
I was tremendously fortunate to be alive and a lawyer, working at a university so I had more flexible hours, when the women's movement was coming alive and when it became possible to argue successfully for a view of the equal protection clause that included women.
As someone who attended six different public schools across America, went to Harvard, and subsequently became a tutor in Manhattan's affluent Upper East Side, I've witnessed firsthand the differences in learning styles between public school educations and private.
I became the storyteller of South Side Chicago. I used an old Kiwi liquid shoe polish as a microphone. I'd go around the house interviewing everybody, telling stupid jokes, doing voices. I mimicked Sidney Poitier, Sammy Davis Jr., people on 'Laugh-In,' Flip Wilson.
Every business decision I ever made I learned from my grandfather Papa Sam. He moved here from Russia when he was a boy. He worked his way up selling newspapers and ladies' handbags, and eventually, he became Cadillac Sam, one of the biggest car dealers in Chicago.
I dreamed of being an actress when I was a little kid because you don't know then that the writer writes everything the actor is saying. But as I got older, I got into college and became more aware that writing is another option, and I started getting into it, too.
I'm a jewelry girl. I became with friends with designer Irene Neuwirth a few years ago. At that point, I just used to wear my wedding rings. Very low key. Now, if I could, I'd be draped from head to toe in her jewelry all the time. Everything she makes is beautiful.
As more airlines consolidated and grew larger and more focused on the bottom line, flying in the U.S. became an awful experience. Despite moves to block our airline from flying, Virgin America began service in August 2007 - with the goal of making flying good again.
During Rahul Dravid's captaincy, Dhoni got the role of a finisher. He got out a couple of times playing a bad shot, and he was also reprimanded by Dravid during one instance. But from that instance, he completely changed his approach and became a very good finisher.
I became interested in ocean issues in the 1980s when I couldn't take my daughters swimming because of pollution at our local beach. Twenty-five years later, I'm a board member of Oceana, the world's largest international organization dedicated to ocean conservation.
When I played Ivanhoe, kids used to come along and kick me because they thought I wore armour under my clothes. When I was Maverick, I was accepted as a cowboy. And in 'The Persuaders,' I became Lord Brett Sinclair. In other words, I am what I am for as long as I am.
I really wasn't into sports at an early age. I couldn't wait to get home from school and go straight to my bedroom and pick up the guitar and play it. It became an obsession with me. That's all I wanted to do was play guitar and learn every lick I heard on the radio.
As I got older, my life become a whirlwind of homework and responsibilities. The hospital became my retreat, a place to gather my thoughts and focus on my health. The nurses are my friends as well as my caretakers. The doctors are my parents as well as my physicians.
I became a vegetarian in 1995. I had some fried chicken, and my teeth hit the bone. My mind said, 'Dead bird, dead bird.' It didn't feel right, so I stopped. I kept eating fish until one day, in 1997, the chef brought my ginger-fried snapper with the head still on it.
I was a product of a divorced family and I used humor as a weapon to combat sadness. I used comedy to make my mother laugh in light of the darkness that she faced, and to me it became a very powerful tool at a very young age, at six. I saw how therapeutic it could be.
In high school, during lunchtime I would go in the room where the wrestling mats were and try different flips and different moves. Like windmills. I just started mixing martial arts with jazz and contemporary stuff and it would get mashed together and became my style.
I loved science, and when I discovered Buddhist meditative practices and martial arts, I was able to bridge those ways of knowing the world into my own unique way. From that grew the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program, which became my karmic assignment.
After I came out of surgery - I was in the hospital for five weeks - I found that I gravitated toward very gentle sounds: chant music, solo bamboo flute sounds, a laid-back record of my own called 'Inside.' And the music became a very real part of my recovery process.
After college, I became a geologist, mapping what lay beneath the earth's surface. I thought I had my life pretty figured out and all my boxes checked. But then, I was laid off - along with thousands of other geologists. I lost not only my job, but also my profession.
My mother's brother became the undersecretary of the interior for Nixon, which did cause a little drama in my family because I was going to riots and everything, but he turned out great and gave us a nice cheque for an AIDS benefit we had for the 'Serial Mom' premiere.
I know some players like being the centre of attention and I admit that when I first became a player I liked fame, too. But that feeling lasted only for three months. Then I realised what it was really like to be the centre of attention all the time. It isn't all good.
To combat the monotony of gym workouts, I started playing soccer. I looked at workouts as training sessions. My soccer training includes squats, pushups, resistance-band work, and sprints. Ninety minutes of running became part of my love of the game rather than a chore.
I had been offered fellowships to enter as a graduate student at either Harvard or Princeton. But the Princeton fellowship was somewhat more generous, since I had not actually won the Putnam competition... Thus Princeton became the choice for my graduate study location.
I had one of those light bulb 'a ha' moments while screening 'Good Will Hunting' in Camp David in 1998 - Madeleine Albright and the Clintons were there, and I just became really inspired by all of these amazing people. I left the screening asking myself what I could do.
I first became interested in style when I was 16 and I had my first couple of gigs. I realised I couldn't look like the people I was performing to. Not in a condescending way, but just that it would be weird if I was wearing exactly what someone in the crowd was wearing.
Let's assume for the moment that the logic behind Presidents Day is actually sound for certain presidents. Why not have a separate holiday for Lincoln and one for Washington - as we used to do, before we became so concerned with the 'Every President Gets a Trophy' ethos?
There were six kids in our family, and I grew up fast. I had to do a lot of things on my own. I was a rebellious teenager. That's why coming into the film business was good for me because it gave me some discipline. Once I became an actor, I had to grow up a little more.
I had an erroneous idea that writing a duology would be simpler than writing a trilogy because I would get to cut out the middle book. It turns out it was actually harder because 'Wildcard' became this combination of having to write a book two and three at the same time.
One might have thought that Brexit would be a wake-up call for the American media. Yet, just as in the U.K. referendum, 'Russia' became the buzzword in the U.S. election that the political and media establishments thought would scare people into voting for the status quo.
My dad had records, but only one deck, so Skep used to try and play a song on one deck - the Music Centre we used to call it, a cabinet with a glass door - he would play one tune on the record and then mix the tape to it, that's what he used to like doing. He became a DJ.
I became real good friends with John Stockton and Karl Malone and am still good friends with them to this day. It was always good to go see them and then play with them in the 1996 Olympics as well. I idolized John Stockton at the time, I tried to model my game after him.
I practiced drawing all the time and became very interested in it. If I was at a meeting that wasn't getting anywhere - like the one where Carl Rogers came to Caltech to discuss with us whether Caltech should develop a psychology department - I would draw the other people.
Umm... my favourite Wizkid tune of all time would be 'Don't Dull' 'cos I recorded the track in, like, 5 minutes. The beat was ready, we went into the studio and freestyled, and it was ready. The song became really, really big, so I think 'Don't Dull' is still my favourite.
I was into all of the Pennsylvania teams at some point in my childhood. I would flip back and forth between the Pirates and the Phillies, and I was always a Steelers fan but not much of an Eagles fan. Then I became kind of a band nerd in school, and I went the music route.
As her life became more unhappy, acting attracted Marie-Antoinette because it fulfilled unmet emotional needs. By all accounts, she was quite good in her little private theatricals. But her desire to be a heroine, both literally and figuratively, was shocking to the French.
Only in about 2007 or so did it become clear to me that games could stand proudly beside other storytelling mediums, and that's when I became more, shall we say, evangelistic in my position. Prior to that, I don't know how enthusiastically I would have admitted that I game.
The reason why Broken Men only became Untouchables was because in addition to being Buddhists, they retained their habit of beef-eating, which gave additional ground for offence to the Brahmins to carry their new-found love and reverence to the cow to its logical conclusion.
I found the most difficult thing when you became successful - when I had the record album, it won Album of the Year - that you were cut off from the source of your material. Your material was everyday people, and you were kind of cut off from that, and you had to work at it.
I became a librarian at the Sainte-Genevieve Library in Paris. I made this gesture to rid myself of a certain milieu, a certain attitude, to have a clean conscience, but also to make a living. I was twenty-five. I had been told that one must make a living, and I believed it.
I suddenly realized that the fellow who didn't show up was getting about fifty-times more money than I was getting. So I thought, 'this is silly,' and became an actor. I certainly never thought I'd wind up in motion pictures. That was far beyond anything I'd ever dreamed of.
I had acne late, in college. My skin used to be really flawless. Went to college, became a vegetarian, ate a lot of cheese - big mistake. Here I am trying to be healthy and I'm eating grilled cheese sandwiches and French fries every day, having mad eruptions all over my face.
For me in my twenties, working in Hollywood was confusing in that the differences between what was fiction and what was nonfiction seemed to blur in my mind. Everything became a visual memory for me. I carried my Leica camera, giving opportunity to take pictures from my view.