I went to almost all of the agencies in New York when I first visited. A lot of them wanted to sign me but also kind of indirectly were telling me that I needed to change in some way. Some directly told me that I wouldn't be a model unless I changed the way that my body looked.
I was finding it very difficult to find a label that understood what I wanted to do and really believed that people wanted to hear something honest and a little bit different. So, I did feel a bit like a clown. You're knocking on everyone's door trying to get them to believe what you're doing.
My family was very notorious in the town that we lived in. Everyone would say, 'There goes those damn Sams.' I didn't want to paint that ill picture of me. I knew the good in my family. They didn't know our background and the adversity we had to endure. I wanted to succeed and be a beacon of hope in my family.
I wanted as little formal linguistic theory as I could get by with. I wanted the basic linguistic training to do a translation of the New Testament.
Would it not be much better to have a president who deliberately lied to the people because he thought a war was essential than to have one who was so dumb as to be taken in by intelligence agencies, especially those who told him what he wanted to hear?
I decided that I wanted to explore all kinds of music with my cello, not just the Western classical tradition. I just wanted to try and expand my vocabulary and bring that different kind of music to my audience.
Grandpa didn't have any idea of customer service. But he wanted to make a living. Eventually, we saw it was not in our best interest to be arguing with customers.
I really wanted to go onstage. Not movies. But I ended up under contract to Paramount. Now I adore film work.
WhatsApp only wanted to focus on how current users were engaging with the product. Like how they did not use advertising and kept the experience uncluttered.
I wanted to be Gene Kelly. Well really, I just wanted to dance with Cyd Charisse.
I would never allow anyone to give me money, no difference how badly I needed it. I wanted literally to earn my living.
When I was growing up, I read Britney Spears' and Mariah Carey's biographies. I just wanted to see how they did it because I was so eager to get into the biz.
Being married and having a child was not something I wanted, and I knew that at a very young age. I tend to be more solitary, and I'm truly a free spirit.
I sensed that my life was better when I focused on things that were working as opposed to focusing on the long list that goes wrong, but I wanted to know if there was any validity to that.
But it seemed to me that as soon as you have computer storage you could put every point you wanted in - make the ones that are less relevant to your central topic, further away or allow the central topic to move as the reader proceeded.
I'm quite dyslexic in school. My dad let me figure out what I wanted to do on my own. My parents never really lecture me.
That was more or less coincidental in the sense that my parents wanted me to come back to New York because that's the center of musical activity still to this day, more or less, and so I auditioned for the Metropolitan Opera.
I became obsessed with making more and more tiny things. I think I was trying to find a way of compensating for my embarrassment at having learning difficulties: people had made me feel small so I wanted to show them how significant 'small' could be.
Maybe my way of communicating through sign made me more in tune with my body and how it moved. Who knows? I just know when I saw a stage for the first time, I wanted to be on it.
Personally, I'm a big reader, and I've never wanted any of my favorite novels to be made into movies.
I always loved samurai movies, and I wanted to incorporate that whole level of elegance and just the code of the samurai to 'Conan.'
At the age of five, of six, at the age of seven, I used to begin weeping sometimes without warning, simply for the sake of weeping, my eyes open wide to the sun, to the flowers... I wanted to feel an immense grief inside me, and it came.
I think the things I wanted answered have been answered by people in the know that we can't talk about, so I'm perfectly happy with how Chewie came to be where he is and what is going on in Episode III.
William Faulkner, Muriel Spark, Richard Yates, William Styron, James Salter, Alice Munro. They're very different writers, and I admire them for different reasons. The common thread, I guess, is that they remind me what's possible, why I wanted to write fiction in the first place.
Since I couldn't actuate the things that I wanted to do, the only weapon I had was to say no.
I'm still astonished that somebody would offer me a job and pay me to do what I wanted to do.
In the past I have defended the right of the IRA to engage in armed struggle. I did so because there was no alternative for those who would not bend the knee, or turn a blind eye to oppression, or for those who wanted a national republic.
The experiences of promoting my first album were really something; there is so much illusion in my environment (touring and pop music) that I wanted to clear away.
I really don't like talking about money. All I can say is that the Good Lord must have wanted me to have it.
It was very clear to me I wanted to be an actor when I got out into civilian life.
I wanted to make a film that was sophisticated and emotional, but for a wider audience.
Anyone who sincerely wanted to use policy to reduce illegal immigration should start by crafting legislation based on changing actual behavior.
I actually wanted to be a police officer like my dad for the longest time, up until my sophomore year in high school when I started doing plays. I did plays when I was little, but in high school, I started getting into acting.
I wanted to do Playboy to get across the same ideas I'm singing and writing about these days. It's all about proving that a woman can defy stereotypes.
I wanted to see if I could be happy without a lot of stuff. And what I found out was, yeah, I really could.
I read about the history of England, of Manchester. I wanted to know how people here live, their interests.
