When I started playing the game of baseball, the more I played and the better numbers I got, the more I started thinking about the Hall of Fame. But I never thought I had a chance to be there.
I thought the best way to topple Assad was not through airstrikes, but through equipping the moderate rebel elements.
I always thought, 'I'm on my own, and that's the way it should be.'
I always thought to myself, 'I don't want to be doing stand-up when I'm 40 years old.'
As a nation we have, over the past seven years, been rebuilding our intelligence with powerful capabilities that many thought we would no longer need after the Cold War. We have been rebuilding our clandestine service, our satellite and other technical collection, our analytical depth and expertise.
I signed 'Aurangzeb' because I loved the story. I thought it was an untold tale. For whatever reason, the audience did not like the film. Fair enough, but I still enjoyed the process.
I've always thought stand-up comedians were the oral storytellers of our time, because they know rhetoric, they know delivery, they know timing, they know all of these things that you can only learn by telling a story out loud and interacting with an audience.
I was 15 when I read the script for 'Earth to Echo.' I thought it was amazing, and I couldn't think of turning it down. It's awesome for a kid from Brooklyn to have an opportunity to be on the big screen. And I had a great experience learning what the movie business is like. So, I'm glad I did it.
Running for office was definitely something I've thought about. When I was younger, I wanted to major in political science. And I've been engaged in current events since I was a kid. If I can make a difference and feel passionately and capable, then I would. Why not?
When I was trying to come up with a stage name, I thought 'Lord' was super rad, but really masculine - ever since I was a little kid, I have been really into royals and aristocracy. So to make Lord more feminine, I just put an 'e' on the end! Some people think it's religious, but it's not.
I would ask to tweak stuff during the action, because I thought Elektra would more likely express herself with a slap, for example. I wanted to keep the characteristics of my character even during the fights and express the violence as she would do it, not like somebody else would.
With my quick success, I didn't have time to learn the ropes of the music business. Because my first record was such a hit, I was terribly spoiled and I thought I couldn't do anything wrong. I was also desperate to make tons of money because of my responsibility to my daughter. And there was no longer any joy in making music.
There is nothing cooler than to have them singing your words back to you. The last show I did, I was kind of nervous about putting the mic out there, because you're not sure how it's going to go. But I did, and they sang the whole chorus. I thought, 'Holy crap! That is the coolest feeling.' It's the biggest rush ever.
It's hard to find good teamwork in practice, and I have never thought that we, as a party, were any better at working as a team than the Tories, despite our core values.
Here's a thought: what if we ban the word 'healthy food' from our culinary vocabulary? I'm not talking about banning foods that are considered healthy. I'm talking about changing the way we think about food overall.
With 'Outlander,' definitely the book fans were at the door, ready to go, as soon as we started. But it felt like it kind of crossed over into more of a general audience rapidly. That did surprise me - I thought it would take longer for general audiences to come around.
Only after awhile. After it came out and people began to engage in discussions about the social reflections of the film that I realized it had an importance I hadn't thought of.
So many people: Lucille Ball is the earliest incarnation of a woman I thought was funny, Joan Rivers, Roseanne, Carol Burnett, Gilda Radnor, down to current times, where you have Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, and Kristen Wiig.
So sweet love seemed that April morn. When first we kissed beside the thorn, So strangely sweet, it was not strange We thought that love could never change.
My parents always told me I'm beautiful the way that I am, and I never thought to myself that I needed to be skinny because there's a magazine out there that said, 'Oh, size two,' or, 'Oh, this girl's beautiful because she's skinny.'
Archimedes was my ideal. I admired the works of artists, but to my mind, they were only shadows and semblances. The inventor, I thought, gives to the world creations which are palpable, which live and work.
Although no one explicitly wants a president who could have a reliable fall back career in stand-up comedy, everyone shudders at the thought of a Rutherford B. Hayes or John Kerry.
Most times when I do a film, it starts out with one idea and ends up not being what I thought it was going to be.
I went to school to study literature and writing, even though I didn't end up really doing that in the end. I thought I would be a teacher, but I didn't really think about it in any practical way.
My father being a soldier, every time I saw soldiers marching - 'Well,' I thought, 'my father's that,' and these soldiers were always looking magnificent. And I thought they were powerful; they were all-powerful. I knew that they were an elite in India.
I guess now music is so saturated and so microwaved. It's, like, 15 minutes in the microwave and boom, you've got something. Nobody's putting passion or any thought behind it anymore.
When I got home from hospital, and I was in a wheelchair in a plaster body cast, an aeroplane flew over. And I thought to myself, 'Well, if I can't walk, then I might as well fly.' And I was lifted into the aeroplane for the first time. And when I took the controls of the aeroplane, I knew this was something I could do. I thought, 'I can fly.'
Understanding who you are is saying, 'You're great; you have tons of confidence, and don't ever forget that.' And that helped me, man. Because when things weren't going right, I thought, 'You've got to remember who you are. Don't stray from that. Don't let these things get you down.'
I thought I was gonna be in the minimum-wage working world all my life.
I was a senior in high school, and my mom saw on the news at work that they were having an open call in New York, and she thought it's for a musical, and maybe we should go and just sort of chalk it up to a new experience... And so, we did. We went.
Even growing up the way I did, I was shocked by the level of poverty I saw as a college student. I thought the best way to understand it was to get close to it on the ground level.
I would say that I was absolutely convinced of the possibility of our making an uranium engine, but I never thought that we would make a bomb; and at the bottom of my heart, I was really glad that it was to be an engine and not a bomb.
I never thought it was unusual to write, and I've been writing or pretending to write since before I even started school.
I thought being on stage was an amazing feeling, but there is nothing that can top watching my wife bring our son into this world.
I had no trouble going from radio to TV - I just thought of TV as radio with pictures.
I feel like with every performance that I see, I get better because I've always thought - while I'm watching people perform - of what I would do.
