To have your childhood dream realized is a really big deal.
I'll never forget the day I realized I wasn't quite the Ford model I thought I was.
I believe it was probably less than ten minutes that went by from the invention of photography to the point where people realized that they could lie with photographs.
I started my blog in 2002. That was pre-MySpace, pre-Facebook. That was back before newspapers realized they were going out of business. That was back when no one gave any credence to Internet writers.
When I was 13, I kind of got into the punk scene. I realized it was easier to wear a pair of combat boots and jeans and a beat-up T-shirt. I think of it as a uniform.
By the 1980s, businesses had realized that environmental issues had a price tag. Increasingly, they balked. Reflexively, the anticorporate Left pivoted; Earth Day, erstwhile snow job, became an opportunity to denounce capitalist greed.
When I saw contestants fighting for their lives on 'The Biggest Loser,' I realized I just wanted to be healthy - to have fun playing soccer with my son or teaching my daughter to shoot hoops. Then it was so much easier to say no to carbs, soda, or dessert, and the weight just came off.
I grew up not liking coffee, even though I'm from Brazil. Then I realized when I moved to San Francisco that it's not that I don't like coffee, I just didn't like the coffee I'd had before. I fell in love with my morning cup of coffee, and my second one at 11 A.M., and so on and so forth.
At art college, I started to do music and then painting and drawing - and that would have been my ideal life, to be an artist and be paid for it, to be able to create stuff. I realized it was difficult, but I don't know if I had the application for it.
I've had Christians treat me in a way that is so wrong and so vicious, I realized there's a difference between God's people and God.
I realized that I didn't need nearly as many calories as I'd grown accustomed to. I ate 100 to 200 calories every two hours or so, consumed healthy proteins (yogurt, lean meat, turkey jerky), and drank a gallon of water a day. And as my weight dropped, my energy soared.
I realized that I could try to sound like Waylon Jennings, or I could try to be like Waylon Jennings... but it's impossible to do both.
I used to have a lot of superstitions, and then I realized that it was kind of hogwash. Once I let go of them, I relaxed a lot.
I'm the absolute worst at getting jobs, ever. I had 100 rejections before I landed one. I kept all the letters in a folder until I realized I could just chuck them away.
My dad was a very conservative Republican businessman, so obviously I considered it a problem when I realized I was a lesbian.
I realized that becoming a doctor, I can only help a small community. But by becoming a politician, I can help my whole country.
When news of the first plane's hitting the World Trade Center reached them, bin Laden's followers exploded with joy. But shrewder members of al-Qaeda and the Taliban leadership in Afghanistan realized that the attacks might not be the stunning victory that bin Laden, and many in the West, took them to be.
I was a different person before I started to write. When I realized I could be a songwriter and that people would listen - that was when I started feeling good in my life.
It's a little silly to finally learn how to write at this age. But I long ago realized I was secretly sincere.
We were always in church, and always singing, so once I realized that music was something that I had a knack for, I sort of latched onto it, and it helped give me an identity and figure out who I was as a person. It informed my way into theater, which informed my way into television.
Once people realized that, 'Hey, we're going to be left on Earth here, and everything is going to hell quickly,' sci-fi soon became about our own self-destruction.
Once, I optioned a novel and tried to do a screenplay on it, which was great fun, but I was too respectful. I was only 100 pages into the novel and I had about 90 pages of movie script going. I realized I had a lot to learn.
Growing up in New York, I was sort of shocked when I realized that my children are Californians. They are 14 years old, and I explain to them frequently that they will never realize the glory of a snow day. You wake up and the world says, 'Oops, it's too much fun to go to school, you've got to stay home and deal with the snow!'
I just realized one day that I was so unhappy. And not only that, but I didn't even like the person that I was. I didn't even know who I was. And so 'Shatter Me' is about first discovering what was under the shell and then learning to love that person that was under it. And then not being afraid to break free.
The more that I looked at DNA, the more I realized it was nature and nurture. It's how genes and your environment work together to produce the person you are.
We are taught to consume. And that's what we do. But if we realized that there really is no reason to consume, that it's just a mind set, that it's just an addiction, then we wouldn't be out there stepping on people's hands climbing the corporate ladder of success.
Ever since I was a little kid, I've felt comfortable in a suit. It all started when my mom bought me a three-piece Pierre Cardin suit. I wore that thing everywhere. Eventually I realized I was going to be the kid who got beat up in school, but I kept wearing it.
But it really wasn't until three to four years later, when we had an opportunity in the lab to make very detailed observations, and comparisons with other fossil discoveries, that we realized she was a new species of human ancestor.
'Divergent' was my utopian world. I mean, that wasn't the plan. I never even set out to write dystopian fiction, that's just what I had when I was finished. At the beginning, I was just writing about a place I found interesting and a character with a compelling story, and as I began to build the world, I realized that it was my utopia.
I realized that I was afraid to really, really try something, 100%, because I had never reached true failure.
I remember when I drove into Notre Dame, getting ready for the first day of work. I had an electrical charge go up my back because I realized all of a sudden that I was responsible for the traditions that the Knute Rocknes and the Frank Leahys had set, and what Notre Dame stood for.
I have my own definitions of success. And I have my own definitions of country music that, luckily, I share with more people than I realized before.
The year I was born, 1955, the first big disease-eradication program in the world was declared for malaria. After about a decade of work, they realized that, at least in the tropical areas, they did not have the tools to get it done.
It was in 1942 and I flew from St. Louis to Mexico City. I had just gotten married and we were on our honeymoon. I hit .397 and led the Mexican League with 20 home runs and was named the MVP of the league. It's when I realized I could compete with anyone at any level.
When disease took my legs, I eventually realized I didn't need them to lead a full, empowering life.
I've been a story-teller all my life but I realized it only recently.