I read 'Treasure Island' for the first time at university. And I started to notice then how unresolved some things were. Later, I realised that Stevenson was interested in sequels, and I wondered whether he would have gone back to it had he lived longer.
We grew up listening to alternative music from the '90s, and there was no shame in being on a major label and still making the music you wanted to make. I feel like rap rock came around and drew a line in the sand, and everybody that was like me ran away from that and started making indie-rock.
Because I come from that old-school optics environment, I know stuff about depth of field and camera movement and things that are not necessarily a part of the curriculum for people who started on a box and have never done anything that wasn't on a box.
I was an Eisenhower Republican when I started out at 21 because he promised to get us out of the Korean War.
The photograph, the clothes, the sets - this was about 1974, and I started hanging out with my friend Richard Sold, who was playing in a band with Patti Smith.
My house was full of music. My main memories are of the record player at home: it was all Beatles and Rolling Stones, and we danced around the living room; that started me off on instruments, and I've done nothing else ever since.
When I started out, I didn't have any desire to be an actress or to learn how to act. I just wanted to be famous.
I was trying to be a writer, and I was kind of getting sidetracked, so I started doing cartoons as a form of expression.
I started trading stocks, options and futures while I was at UCLA, using my earnings from working summers at the old IBM plant on Cottle Road. I never lost interest in how companies work. It's fundamental to who I am.
I was a girly-girl until I moved to New York. Then I got really into the androgynous look of the early-'90s club scene. I had really short hair and started blurring the line a bit. But for me, grade school was about Benetton, Esprit, and Guess jeans.
When I came out of service, the first couple of releases didn't really hit so I just took a little hiatus and sat down to see what was happening. I just glued my ears to the radio and then I started writing - the first hit record that came out was 'Everybody Loves a Winner.'
When I was around eight, I learned how to touch-type at school, and I received a computer as a present. I started writing plays, and for many years I thought I would be a playwright.
Nobody took you out for lunch when I started. Carla Bruni took me out for lunch once. She was really nice. Otherwise, you don't get fed.
I've gone down several paths. I started school as an engineer, but underneath it all, I knew I wanted to use instruments, not build them.
It is difficult to determine the cause of grass fires. There is usually nothing left behind when we get there, like a cigarette or a gas can, for us to determine what started it.
They called themselves an army. They were planning on recruiting more armies. They were planning on splitting up and forming smaller cells and going into different areas, recruiting more members and just growing until they had started a full scale war in this country.
I've dreamed landscapes for years, and my dreams play an enormous role in my work. In fact, when I first started doing landscapes I felt insecure about painting in this style, and the dreams were like positive omens for me, and I've done a few paintings that were exact replicas of images that came to me in dreams.
If you look not just at the Arab Spring, but at what I call the 'Youth Spring' that has started in Europe, young people are starting to find a voice, and they are not looking to the traditional media to reflect that.
Anything you can do needs to be done, so pick up the tool of your choice and get started.
I didn't do a masters in creative writing until I was 26, which is quite old, and then I found myself in New York and I needed money, so I started working full time as an editor.
As I started eating more natural foods and thinking about what I was putting into my body, I became more interested in what I was putting on it, too.
As soon as I got successful, the Scottish press started picking on me. It's something they reserve just for me.
When I started researching history in the 1960s, a lot of women about whom I've subsequently written were actually footnotes to history. There was a perception that women weren't important. And it's true. Women were seen historically as far inferior to men.
I've started doing book reviews for Barnes & Noble! They saw that I did a lot of book reviews on the site, and they figured that it might not be a bad thing if they got me to do some for them as well. I gave them five categories I'd be interested in reviewing, from art to fiction to music.
In my travels, I also noticed that kids in Thailand like spicy food, and kids in India love curry. I'm hoping to introduce my son, Hudson, to lots of veggies and spices when he's young. I say that before he's started on solid foods, so it could be easier in theory than practice!
I always say that when I first started, my videos were very veered towards Indian people.
The magazine was being started by a company that had no experience in business magazine publishing. It was a little difficult to get people to sort of buy into it and to join the staff, but we did.
When I was 15, I started playing first class cricket and always dreamt of being a Test cricketer, wanted to do something for the country, married in 1995, have 2 kids it's been great.
When people say, 'How did you start in comedy,' I say my family was kidnapped by ninjas when I was very young, and to get them released I had to do a killer five-minute set. And even after I did that, you know, I started doing comedy under tough circumstances, I still kept at it because I enjoyed it.
As plans for the first lunar landing started to be made, nobody had really thought about who would be out first.
I made a decision to have a preventive double mastectomy. I started with the breasts, as my risk of breast cancer is higher than my risk of ovarian cancer, and the surgery is more complex.
Starting probably with Janeane Garofalo and that era of stand-up ladies who were starting to be more brainy and strong and clever, guys started noticing those girls as sexy smart. I always called it smarxy.
The runs started in Thailand after the IMF intervened in such a dramatic way. Then the IMF came to Indonesia.
Obviously the people that I admired, like the Beatles, were really into rock'n'roll, but it was already a little past rock'n'roll when I started listening and making my own choices about music.
One of the reasons I started Tzadik, which is my own label, is to keep things in print. I got tired of labels dropping things out of print when they don't sell.
I was digging in the backyard to get my own clay and making pottery. And then I started taking pictures and built my own darkroom. I would go out at six in the morning and just take pictures.
