To my knowledge, I was the first guy really to do what I do. And then later on different comedians started trying doing it.
I realized that I had traveled to Havana during what now seems like the childhood of the Cuban Revolution, if you think that Fidel has now been in power for 44 extremely long years. I started looking at the revolution as history, and not as part of the daily news.
And I used to write novels and little stories and compositions and I - but I put them away because I started acting when I was 17. So there wasn't much time.
So I just had to step up how I was doing it and the moment that I stepped up and the moment I focused all my energy on that is when things started to happen. So there's a direct relationship between my inspiration and my output.
I started to like blues, I guess, when I was about 6 or 7 years old. There was something about it, because nobody else played that kind of music.
My hunch is that pop culture began to stagnate the moment Americans started to love the past more than they did the future.
I learned to read very early so I could read the comics, which I then started to draw.
It was a wrong number that started it, the telephone ringing three times in the dead of night, and the voice on the other end asking for someone he was not.
I went to Brunel University and very much wanted to go on to do a PhD in management, but then my acting career started to take off. In those days when you switched on the box there were hardly any brown or black faces.
We started experimenting with television in 1928. For a lot of people, Philips has a lot to do with TV.
I always knew I was going to do something with music, but with my whole family being in the business, acting was something that was just mine. But when I was 20 or 21, I started writing songs and felt the itch to make a record.
Hip hop has been an integral part of my life and my whole career. I started off doing videos with Ice Cube and Dre and Mary J. Blige and TLC.
I started billboard painting in Minneapolis, and I went to General Outdoor Advertising, and I said, 'I could do that.' They said, 'Oh yeah... we can always use a good man around here.'
One of the main techniques I used was focusing on the goal and visualising myself competing in the race before the race started.
My stage name has always been 'Armin van Buuren.' When I really started DJ'ing professionally, I already had a few U.K. hits under my belt under the name 'Armin', so I couldn't really change that anymore.
I started in London, as a kid. My mother knew I had sort of an inbred talent. She was an actress, so I inherited it from her. But I think I got a lot of it from my grandfather, who was a great politician.
'Axe Cop' is an animated show that just started on Fox that is based off the comic book series. And here's the hook: it's written by a 5-year-old. This 5-year-old has a brother who's, like, 28 and is in the business, and the little brother kept coming up with all these awesome stories for this character he dreamed up called Axe Cop.
Theater in Chicago will always be my first love. It started careers for me and about 50 of my friends. We all love coming back. As soon as the TV show is over, I'll be back in Chicago, doing live theater.
When I started at the Globe 40 years ago, there were seven newspapers in Boston and now there are only two. There were only three or four television stations in Boston and now there are a dozen.
When Seymour saw me seated at the piano at that first rehearsal, he shouted: 'What's that kid doing here? Call your piano player and let's get started.'
I started writing stories as a child.
I've gotten to go wonderful places, meet interesting and intelligent people, and I started of course in the theatre and continue to work in the theatre where there is some intelligence involved in it.
Then they started pulling me in and I was very resistant. All the other actors would be saying write more, more dialogue for me, and I'd always be saying 'No, less, less'.
After I started to understand the spiritual dimension of life, I understood the responsibilities you have as a husband, a father, a friend and a hockey player.
I started writing songs by myself. That always came from whatever I was feeling and being honest about that because I never had any intention of anyone ever hearing them.
I think there are four or five interesting pockets where a lot of cool technology companies are getting started. Chicago is one of them. New York is certainly another. Silicon Valley really dominates. And you're seeing some stuff out of Boston and Seattle and down South.
I started singing very early. I was six or seven years old, and I was singing along to TV commercials and figuring out, 'Oh, hey, I can sing in tune. This is really cool.' But the songwriting thing came much much later, when I was 19 years old.
I got into medicine at university, then deferred a year to see. Then I started acting and just never went back to university.
When I got fired from coaching, I started coaching high school because my son played. I realized real quick that high school football is in trouble. There's no budget. A lot of kids have got to pay to play, and every year, coaches are getting out of the profession. Kids aren't playing like they used to. It bothers me.
When I first started out as a young journalist, I know that on at least two occasions, when I walked into a newsroom, I knew I was replacing the black person in that job.
About 25 years ago, I started out as a reporter covering politics. And that sort of just evolved into organized crime, because organized crime and politics were the same thing in Boston.
I started skating because I loved it. I started when I was three and I didn't know all the sacrifices and all the hardships and how difficult day-in and day-out it would be.
I am really not interested in the cinema. I loathed it when I started six years ago, and I don't enjoy it even now.
I started as a writer for magazines, and soon they asked me to illustrate my stories. I started from the bottom of the bottom. And I climbed the stairs, one by one.
I was chomping at the bit to get my career started - so after I took all the theater courses at Brooklyn College I enrolled in a two year program at AMDA in the city (The American Musical Dramatic Academy) I was there for 6 months and loved it.
When we started Aftermath, we had something like 20 artists, and it was driving me crazy. I couldn't sit down and focus on any of it. Plus, it was doubly hard because you ended up crushing these people's dreams when you had to let them go.
