I remember that, at an early age, I spent many months making a three-masted sailing boat with rigging in a half-walnut shell.
I know what it's like to have a family and not have insurance and really need it. As a comic, insurance was one of those sacrifices I made early on until I could afford it.
From an early age, I had the idea that writing was truth-telling. It's on the record. Everybody can see it. Maybe it goes back to the sacred origins of literature - the holy book. There's nothing holy about it for me, but it should be serious, and it should be totally transparent.
Back in the early days like for the Temptations, Supremes and Four Tops, artist development was alive in record companies. Every artist had a moment to develop the record visually. When the web took over and camera phones, it stripped the artists of the power to figure it out. So there's a need to bridge that gap and that's my job.
I decided very early on that it took too much of my energy to pretend to be someone else. People will make up their minds about me whatever I do or say, but at least I know I am being true to myself.
Early inspirations included Michael Jackson, Prince, Stevie Wonder, Donny Hathaway, Marvin Gaye, Lionel Richie... Those were the people I actually wound up studying just to hone my craft.
As late as the early '50s, jazz was still, for the most part, a genuinely popular music, a utilitarian, song-based idiom to which ordinary people could dance if they felt like it.
If you take guys like Exequiel Bustillo, the architect who designed the early park infrastructure in Argentina, or the great American architects, these guys had a vision that thrust the national park idea into the public eye.
Early in my career, I didn't want to disappoint my colleagues, clients, or family. So I said yes to everything. This ended up raising my stress level and shortchanging everyone else - including myself - because I couldn't give anyone 100 percent of my time, nor could I pay close attention.
My first encounter with Marx's writings came very early in life, as a result of the strange times I grew up in, with Greece exiting the nightmare of the neofascist dictatorship of 1967-74.
In the early days of love sometimes, you will report an ecstatic feeling you have met someone who seems to understand you without you needing to speak.
In the early days, I really felt the pain of not being able to find information easily. I guess that helped me to develop an urge to write things like a search engine.
Starting early in life and in school, we need to ensure women develop the confidence and capabilities to work in a team that will allow them to reach the heights of leadership.
I don't know how it could be more stark or clear: this entire society is being dominated by corporate power in a way that may exceed what happened in the late nineteenth century, early twentieth century.
Occasionally, I make waffles for breakfast for any employee who wants to talk to me. I make them around 8 A.M. as an incentive for people to show up early.
Early on, after gay liberation, there was an almost Stalinist pressure from gay critics and even gay readers to write about positive role models. We were never supposed to write negative things about gays, or else we were seen as collaborating with the enemy.
As a small kid, I came across things like these early Edward Gorey books in department-store bookstores. These were these really unusual objects to me. I didn't know how they fit into the comic world or into newspaper comics.
Even before I joined journalism, I knew that this is what I wanted to do. Tintin was an early inspiration.
I was a huge fan of Bobby Cox, a huge fan of Chipper Jones and John Smoltz. And just those guys, I grew up watching those guys and often wondered early on in my career if I would ever have the chance to play for the Atlanta Braves, and there it was. God kind of answered my prayers.
In my late 30s, I flirted with the idea of having a child without necessarily being in a steady relationship. But I've never had a strong maternal urge, and then I got cancer of the womb - luckily caught at an early stage - so that put paid to that.
I think it is just a function of the fact that I moved around so much as a child that I learnt early on to make every place my home.
Because I was an only, I had more things, and I remember early on the kick I got from giving stuff away. Despite all the myths about only children not being able to share, actually I've never knowingly met a stingy one.
I nearly failed when Virgin was in its infancy; I nearly failed in the early 1980s, and, of course, I have nearly died more than once trying to achieve a world record for boating or ballooning. But through a combination of luck and planning, both Virgin and I are still here.
In early January I introduced my legislation, which, besides prohibiting Federal funding of human cloning, also expresses the sense of Congress that foreign nations should establish total prohibition on human cloning as well.
Being at the mercy of the acting profession, in the early days of one's career, is really brutal and feels like you have no control over your life, at all.
Very early on, you figure out that you put your self-esteem in the hands of strangers. There's a different commodity. There's the Helena Bonham Carter that everyone thinks they know, who really has nothing to do with me. But you just have to let that go.
'Suffragette' is an intense drama that tracks the story of the foot soldiers of the early feminist movement as they fight for the right to vote.
Generally, I don't like to walk out of a movie. It's like a relationship - you want to see it to the end; otherwise, you won't know if you left early or not.
In the early 1940s, as a young teenager, I was utterly appalled by the racist and jingoist hysteria of the anti-Japanese propaganda. The Germans were evil, but treated with some respect: They were, after all, blond Aryan types, just like our imaginary self-image. Japanese were mere vermin, to be crushed like ants.
I spent the first 12 years of my life growing up in Singapore. Back then, in the early '80s, it was still a tropical island at the tip of the Malay Peninsula striving to shine on the world stage.
Investment in early education is not a Liberal or Conservative idea. Nor should it be decided along party lines.
My early memories of 'Who' are clouded by time and confused by repeats and reissues. I have no direct recollection of the first two Doctors and none at all of the first season of the Pertwee era. By the last two seasons of the Third Doctor, I was properly hooked.
I kinda halfway paid attention to politics during my early years, but the older you get, the more you realize it's very important to pay attention to who gets elected. They can ruin the country.
In the early days, it was, you know, I used to weep while I was writing. I used to grab at any kind of anything, any hint, any tip of how to make it easy.
I traveled with then-Senator Obama to Israel in 2008. I will never forget our time in the holy city of Jerusalem and following behind him as he approached the Western Wall - and even in the dark hours of that very early morning, it was a place bustling with energy afforded by one's faith.
I'm inspired by films from the early '50s, especially Jean Simmons in 'The Clouded Yellow' - and by vintage swing, psychobilly gigs, sea shanties, and English folklore.
