I've got more than 600 pairs of Ray-Ban sunglasses, from 1950s originals to newer models. I have them on the wall like opticians do so I can pick out a pair that goes with my outfit. I had around 30 pairs, then my husband Rainer started getting them for me as birthday and Christmas gifts.
I was homeless and I was in San Diego and I started singing in a local coffee shop and people started coming to hear me sing.
I started off as a model and struggled for some time until I got a break as an actress. I was too stubborn to let go and was sure I was in the right place at the right time. I just fought and I think that's how I am where I am today.
I'm really awkward when people recognize me. I'm not good at it, and for the most part it hadn't happened to me until 'True Blood,' and then, all of a sudden, it started happening all the time.
The Bible looks like it started out as a game of Mad Libs.
My mother bought a piano, put it in the front room, and I just started writing my songs.
When I started playing in bands, we had to be apologetic for what we did. We had to be apologetic because the mainstream was so bad.
I started working at Apple about 18 months after I bought my Apple II.
Well, I first started going to Europe in the late '70s.
I flew into New York for the Raising Arizona audition, and we just started joking around.
The truth is, when I got started in this business, it wasn't because I had a full understanding of the importance of the business, but because I thought it was fun. I found it exciting. It fulfilled me, whatever it was that I was looking for.
Now on a personal level with things like the California Tax Commission... I really think if people started banding together and saying no to this it could snowball and that could really help.
Google started out when the dot-com boom was happening. It grew under the radar of big companies that were competing in but basically ignoring search. Then they were able to really invest during the bust for a long time.
I think my dad did legal work for someone who had a Packard Bell 8088, and they couldn't pay him, so they gave him a computer. I was initially not allowed to touch it, but that didn't last long. I started tinkering with it, and there were many times I screwed up the computer.
I started acting when I was 13 in New York. Worked there for a couple years, then auditioned for a show there that was going to be filming here. Ended up coming out, getting the job and just staying.
I actually started as a concert pianist. I had a scholarship to the Julliard School of Music.
When I started running for Congress, it actually took me by surprise that so many people were fascinated with me being the first Muslim in Congress.
I shaved my head about 15 years ago and the first time I shaved it, I started running my hand through my hair and it was very therapeutic.
Well, I didn't really admit that I anywhere until my daughter started school and I knew I couldn't pull up and leave when I felt like it.
I was seen dancing at school by a director, who asked me to be in a TV play. And it had a huge impact. So I think that's what really started me off.
For me, 'Lamb' started out as a further exploration of the phenomenon of faith and the responsibility of a messiah that I touched on in 'Coyote Blue' and 'Island of the Sequined Love Nun,' but it ended up being an exploration of the true meaning of sacrifice, loyalty, and friendship.
People say I am stuck in childhood, but it's not that. I remember seeing a Matisse retrospective, and you could see he started out one way, and then he tried something different, and then he seemed to spend his whole life trying to get back to the first thing.
When I started, I had nothing. Because my family was really, really, really poor.
The movement for the environment really only started in the mid 1970's.
I associate the metaphor of sport with war. The unrest in the former Yugoslavia, after all, started with a football match that then became charged in nationalist ways and ended in violence.
I did fringe theatre for so many years, and then I got my first play at the RSC, which was an amazing feeling, but I was 30 and had started acting in my early twenties.
While I was in high school, I started working professionally and got an agent.
I remember hearing in first grade, 'Oh, why does she get to skip school?' It wasn't like I suddenly started feeling different. I always knew that I was. I never felt I missed out.
I remember, when we started 'Leverage,' we were all in Chicago, and I read the script for the pilot and thought, 'Boy, this is just a real interesting place to begin a character.' I had to figure out how to go about playing someone who had hit rock bottom.
I've been designing since I was 8. I started sketching dresses I could wear when skating. I was always involved in all aspects of skating, not just the technique, the choreography, the music, but the visual aspects, too - what I should wear.
We started with the basics of kicking and punching, then we moved on once we got proficient in that, we moved on to working with the weapons, and from then on working with the wires.
I think there were times when I first started out, when I was covering Iraq - I was basically living there in 2003 and 2004 - that car bombs and attacks became so the norm that it was weird for me to leave and realize that no one else actually cared about what was going on there.
Before I started my company in 1998, I worked for big companies traveling a lot and saw firsthand how much waste there was. I was flying across the world in first class to places like Italy or Hong Kong, where I was staying in 5-star hotels, only to nickel and dime someone over a sweater price.
I don't get facials. The last time I got a facial was when I first started modeling when I was 15 or 16. It made my face completely break out.
I realized what Led Zeppelin was about around the end of our first U.S. tour. We started off not even on the bill in Denver, and by the time we got to New York we were second to Iron Butterfly, and they didn't want to go on!
I think I did pretty well, considering I started out with nothing but a bunch of blank paper.
