I knew Quintessentially was a success when my father, who does a lot of business in Beirut, introduced himself to somebody and they said, 'Oh, do you know Ben Elliot? I'd really like to meet him.' I remember him ringing me up, really annoyed.
I was giving a speech one time, and the woman who introduced me said, 'Well, she used to be J. D. Salinger's girlfriend. I thought, 'God, is that all I've been?' I didn't want to be reduced to that.
When I was little and I was introduced to Led Zeppelin, I didn't know what a zeppelin was or who Zeppelin was or what the machine was. The real meaning is whatever feelings and memories you attach to the music.
I'm from Louisiana, and that's where I got my start, in Cajun music. There's a huge music scene down there centered around our culture. Those are people that are not making music for a living. They are making music for the fun of it. And I think that's the best way I could have been introduced to music.
The other thing I like, in fact, several months ago I introduced a bill to end the absurd catch and release policy where our government has been giving tickets, essentially, to people who enter illegally and then letting them go and show up of their own volition.
I've introduced myself with comedy, and once you've introduced yourself as something, that's where people keep you. That's where people like to hold you.
I originally wanted to be a pop star. I wanted to be Kylie Minogue. My dad thought that was a very silly ambition and introduced me to drama classes. Once I became fixated on that, there was no stopping me.
The Toothbrush mustache was first introduced in Germany by Americans, who turned up with it at the end of the 19th century the way Americans would turn up with ducktails in the 1950s. It was a bit of modern efficiency, an answer to the ornate mustaches of Europe - pop effluvia that fell into the grip of a bad, bad man.
I still feel like I'm alone at times - even if I'm in the midst of a million people. Because no one - including me - understands my mind creatively. I haven't really been formally introduced to my gift yet. I feel like I'm still on the runway.
I'm very much involved in art. I started buying art a few years ago and really like the work of T.C. Cannon, who is a native American artist. Then I was introduced to Soviet-era Russian impressionism and started collecting that, especially Gely Korzhev.
My English teachers gave me a copy of Atwood's 'The Handmaid's Tale' when I left high school, which has always been very special to me - it was the novel that introduced me to dystopian fiction. I'm also influenced by Edgar Allan Poe, Dickens, John Wyndham and Middle English dream-visions.
