I started off doing fiction in 1993. It didn't occur to me to do nonfiction because it wasn't a thing yet. So I was bumbling around, writing short stories, and then I took a nonfiction workshop, and I realized that this was what I was supposed to do.
I started dieting. I dieted, dieted, dieted and tried all the diets and I would lose and then I would go back to normal eating and would put it on and then some.
Over the years, I've given myself a thousand reasons to keep running, but it always comes back to where it started. It comes down to self-satisfaction and a sense of achievement.
I think it's important for people to understand that this started with President Bill Clinton. He, as president, thought it was such a big priority, he passed the defense of marriage - defense of traditional non-gay marriage - that we have it as a federal law.
The sooner we get started with alternative energy sources and recognize that fossil fuels makes us less secure as a nation, and more dangerous as a planet, the better off we'll be.
I came home in the afternoon to sleep, and there was this e-mail from Comedy Central saying they were interested in having me be part of this new show called 'Jump Cuts'! So I called them right away, and the producer started laughing and said, 'We sent that e-mail one minute ago - you're so fast!'
When I was really young, my babysitters had horses, and I started riding them.
When I started 'This American Life', one of the reactions I got was, 'When is the adult going to show up who will host the show?' At some point, people just got used to it.
I started writing a journal, and I was learning so much along the way. How to deal with your family, how to deal with your friends.
When I really started liking music was when I could play some of it myself, and after a couple of years of playing folk music, I kinda rediscovered those hits that were on the radio all the time when I was a kid.
As long as sixty years ago, when I first started to read newspapers, I read of floods on the Yellow River and the Yangtze. Who rushed in with men and money to help? The Americans did.
I never picked a bass up before Sabbath started.
One of my assistants found this old German machine. It was originally used to make underwear. Like Chanel, who started with underwear fabric - jerseys - we used the machine that made underwear to make something else.
My cut is blunt and futuristic, and Nicki Minaj started wearing that bob on her head after she came to my show, so at the end of the day, I know what I do, and I know what I possess, and I know who I am. I'm a trendsetter. The biggest form of flattery is imitation, so I'm flattered.
We did not treat the Americans badly. They left Iran in a relaxed mood. The embassy was active here after the revolution. We didn't have any problem with them. They started it.
I've always loved... actually I didn't always love horror films. I started out and I only liked comedies and dramas.
Oh, I started out young. They handed me a cotton sack when I was about 8 years old. Give me a little small one, tell me to fill it up. I never did like the farm but I was out there with my grandmother, didn't want to get away from around her too far.
I started acting as a way to support myself.
Then I started listenin' a lot to classical composers. Piano works. Just to see what they were doin'. That sort of put me in a different groove to try to blend all that in.
When I first started out, being from the South and going to New York or Chicago, people kept telling me to get voice lessons and 'lose that stupid accent you got.' And I'm like, 'Well, where I come from, you have the stupid accent.'
I listened to Bill Bennett and tons of other talk show hosts who talked about that and other policies and started branching out and caring about other issues in regards to politics.
I lost my edge for boxing, I didn't put as much into it as I did before. I didn't run as far. I didn't train as hard. I didn't eat correctly. I started drinking a little bit every now and then.
A friend of mine that I was in a band with started me on Kafka, which in turn led to Camus and Sartre.
Before the Beatles, America was musically a very conservative country. You can see film footage of people at a baseball game, they all had hats and ties on, and the women were dressed up like they were going to church. That was the America that I started getting interested in musically.
I'm not sure what my material would have been if I'd have started earlier. I probably would have started with 'Damsels in Distress' kinds of films because that's the kind of comedy I was writing in college. So I didn't really have any life experience to work off of.
I was a pain most of my childhood, always mad at the things I didn't have. Things shifted drastically in my 20s when I started putting an emphasis on gratitude. Focus on the good you do have, not the things you lack.
I started my career in Portugal, and the longest I've ever played a character was for about a year, which is how long our TV shows last.
When I first started all this, it was mostly music fans that came along, Stones fans. But now, I'm being taken seriously. I've got highfalutin' art collectors and everything!
My father is an actor, so he brought me into his agency when I was young. It wasn't something I wanted to do until high school, when I started taking theater and really liked it. Then an agent found me and wanted me to come out to Los Angeles and give it a shot. I gave myself six months, but it only took me like a week to get a job.
I started being really proud of the fact that I was gay even though I wasn't.
I, for one, am pretty exhausted since I started blogging almost a year ago. But I am blaming that on my two sons, aged 3 and 6, whose perpetual-motion-machine energy is hard to keep up with at my advanced age.
I started writing movie scripts. They excited me a lot, but I didn't like them when they were finished because they were simple copies of the films I saw in childhood.
I actually started off majoring in computer science, but I knew right away I wasn't going to stay with it. It was because I had this one professor who was the loneliest, saddest man I've ever known. He was a programmer, and I knew that I didn't want to do whatever he did. So after that, I switched to Communications.
When I started in fashion, for the first 10 years, I said to myself every day, 'I'm going to quit tomorrow.'
You know, I never knew if I had any talent when I started in this business. My first job was being a page at The Tonight Show. I saw Jack Paar come out one night and sit on the edge of his desk and talk about what he'd done the night before. I thought, 'I can do that!' I used to do that on a street corner in the Bronx with all my buddies.
I'm a little top heavy, so I have to pay attention to that area. I think it was from my years of swimming in school when I was a kid and it just overdeveloped my upper body. In fact, when I started modeling, my back was so developed, I could not fit into any dresses.
