I started buying records in the '80s. I listened to everything new wave, disco, funk synth-pop, rock, but in my house we were listening to bossa nova, tango, and folk.
I grew up loving music and being super involved in church choir and school musicals and such, but when I started writing is when I fell in love with the idea of doing it for the rest of my life.
It was football I enjoyed most. When I moved to L.A. to become a stand-up comedian, I thought it might be a good comedy hook to also be the punter for USFL club The L.A. Express, so I started practicing for the tryouts. Luckily, my stand-up took off, and I didn't need to do it.
I don't think I can pick apart how I was influenced by which author. But these were the authors whose books I went back to again and again when I was in high school and college, when I first started trying to write stories.
When I was 13, I asked for a guitar. And that's how I really started explaining my point of view.
I had been here five years already, training very hard, learning about the systems, the shuttle, the station systems. But, everything really became real when I started to work with them.
If we get caught up in a story, it's because we've started to care about the characters, and that can only happen if we've moved beneath the surface.
When I was a teenager I loved acting, but I really just loved it for myself. I didn't like the fact that anyone else saw the work I was doing. When I moved to New York, I started to realize that I wanted people to see the stuff that I was doing, and I wanted it to mean something to them.
In a way, I started 'Goon Squad' not even realizing I was writing a book. I thought I was just writing a few stories to stall before starting this other book that I wanted to write - or thought I wanted to write: I still haven't written it.
I started this foundation when I was diagnosed. It was established for one reason, and that was to try to find a cure for MS. Every penny, 100% of the public donations that come into this are given back out in the form of grants to colleges and researchers around the world.
We got a little waylaid along the way. The whole problem started about 10 years ago with management and legal battles, then still trying to make albums while I was doing all of that.
Since I started composing I have always worked with series of tempos, even superimposed the music of different groups of musicians, of singers, instrumentalists who play and sing in different tempos simultaneously and then meet every now and then in the same tempo.
When I wake up in the morning, I just can't get started until I've had that first, piping hot pot of coffee. Oh, I've tried other enemas.
At 11, I passed the scholarship - only just; I wasn't very good at maths - to Ilford County High for Girls. When the Second World War started we were evacuated, first of all to Ipswich, and then to Aberdare, Queen of the Valleys, in south Wales.
I had an idea in the beginning to do a book about some of the events that I had covered, just various stories that I've covered. Reporters spend a lot of time telling each other tales about how they covered stories, and that's what this book started out to be.
I actually started singing in church when I was about five years old. I remember looking at the choirs and just hearing all of those great big beautiful voices. And there was this one woman who could just wail. And I remember trying to sing like her when I was like going home.
War never accomplishes anything. It's never going to look good in the history books. People are never going to look back and think, 'He started a lot of wars; what a great leader he was!' That's not the way it works. God knows how many more of these things we're going to need before it starts to sink in.
I'm fascinated by how Hollywood has changed since I started. Today it's about immediate delivery. There's less risk and less art.
The first thing I did when my career started moving was to buy a small house.
I tried to copy some of his mannerisms at first but it didn't work. And then I just let the spirit of the character grow in me and it just took its rightful place. I started to speak the lines and it felt right.
I was an amateur wrestler, which I loved. It was my passion, but I started really late; I was a junior in high school when I began.
It was really weird, when this thing started, to hear lawyers and MTV people calling me and actually saying 'ButtHead.' People tried to avoid it too.
'The Glass Menagerie' by Tennessee Williams is a great play. I had to read it for school when I was younger, but I started writing scripts after that. That's what got me into writing.
Every time that we've ever fought, we fought to keep from bein' destroyed. We've never started a war.
I was 20 years old, working as a roofer and a telemarketer and driving a taxi, just barely getting by. A friend of a friend suggested I try acting. I was like, 'Why? What am I going to do? Community theater?' But I took a class, and the teacher thought that I had potential, so I moved to Vancouver and started auditioning.
There has always been a certain proportion of people who leave the Church on issues of authority and sex. That hasn't changed since we started doing research on it back in the early 1960s.
People said that way back in the early days I was probably one of the first rappers; the reason is that I couldn't sing, so I had to talk! Lou Reed was probably the one who started it all.
As someone who started a small business from scratch, I know how important it is for families and for communities to have strong job creation.
At one time musical theater, particularly in the '40s and '50s, was a big source of pop songs. That's how musical theater started, really - it was just a way of linking several pop songs for the stage.
For me, I actually come from an electronic dance music background: house music, electro house, trance music, even. When I was coming out of school, basically, I discovered Brain Fever, Flying Lotus, J Dilla and all that. That was when I got excited about hip-hop and when the Flume project started.
I started with ballet, and once I started to really like it, I got into more - I did jazz and tap, and then kept going.
I actually started singing those songs six or seven years ago, when I was an opening act for Frank Sinatra.
Basically I started to jot notes, lots of faxes back and forth to my writer, we faxed ideas throughout the whole first draft, and started all over again.
When I did my first price guide in 1979, publications weren't interested in mentioning it. Now I get phone calls weekly if not daily from publications and television shows who want to know what's hot, how to get started in antiques, and the best way to buy antiques.
When I started acting, it was really the way for me to be able to communicate.
Well my taste wasn't very good when I first started out. But later, when I began to appreciate the art of acting, I would say the actress I most admire is Vanessa Redgrave.
