The office of President is a great one; to every true American it seems the greatest on earth. And to me, as I was engaged in weaving a background of music for the pageantry of it, there came a deeper realization of the effect of that office on the man.
This means I must pay close attention to the writing, but equally so to the scientific background - which sometimes means doing fairly involved calculations.
I come from an Irish working-class background but went to a posh school, and any type of pretension was quickly mocked at home. I've always had a keen eye for pretension.
I'm from a lower middle class background; all my family were immigrants.
My food is Louisiana, New Orleans-based, well-seasoned, rustic. I think it's pretty unique because of my background being influenced by my mom, Portuguese and French Canadian. There's a lot going on there.
My problem with the wedding industry started when I studied in college and liked to have the television on in the background, and 'A Wedding Story' on TLC always came on, and I'd get irritated that the story of two people making a lifelong commitment to each other could be encapsulated in a half-hour show about the party they throw.
Rose was sexy. It was my fantasy about her. She accomplished so much and came from so little in terms of a background that would have prepared her for the world, let alone the world of entertainment.
I've known a lot of religious people. My mother is very religious, but she also is very private about it. When I was growing up, she never went to church. She just prayed and read her Bible and kept it to herself. I'm not from a background of flamboyant believers. It's much more a personal issue.
Background singers who are any good have to be great imitators.
I guess everything having to do with your background has some influence on how you tell stories but it's hard to parse how growing up in a Jewish community in Minnesota really affected it.
As young West Point cadets, our motto was 'duty, honor, country.' But it was in the field, from the rice paddies of Southeast Asia to the sands of the Middle East, that I learned that motto's fullest meaning. There I saw gallant young Americans of every race, creed and background fight, and sometimes die, for 'duty, honor, and their country.'
The food was interesting. My background is Russian, so cheese and potatoes are my love. There was plenty of that. And fried cheese! It is really, really, really good. And really, really, really bad for you. It's like an artery on a plate.
I'm not a comedian, I'm not a stand-up and I don't come from a comedy background. I am an actor, but I've had a very fortunate foray into comedy, and it seems to have become a bit of a strength, and you can't complain when you become known for something.
I came from a hospitality background and saw that 80 percent of seats in cars weren't occupied most of the time.
I mean simply to say that I want my characters to suggest the background in themselves, even when it is not visible. I want them to be so powerfully realized that we cannot imagine them apart from their physical and social context even when we see them in empty space.
I should like to say that I am as proud of my Chinese heritage and background as I am devoted to modern science, a part of human civilization of Western origin, to which I have dedicated and I shall continue to dedicate my work.
I do write about race a lot, but I don't think writers - of any shade or background or whatever - have to write about certain subjects.
With my background, I came out of the theater.
Working within the limitations of the shared world generally made the writing easier, because I didn't have to invent any of the characters or background, which is usually the hardest part.
But I came from a conservative Republican background.
So maybe there are three parts in my life - earlier background living in exile in Xinjiang in a very political circumstance, then later the United States from 24 to 36 years old. I was quite equipped with liberal thinking. Then the Internet. If there is no Internet, of course, I cannot really exercise my opinion or my ideas.
My whole background is theater, and theater is to some degree presentational.
Al Jazeera is a representation of, you know, diversity in the Arab world. In our newsroom, we have every single nationality, we have every single, you know, ideology, we have every single background. However, when it comes to the screen, we have one code of ethics and one code of conduct.
Dancing for the length of time that I did, it centered me in such a way to be really in tune with my body, and I just feel like I'm physically able to do things because of my ballet background. Without ballet, I don't think I'd look graceful at all on screen.
I'm not really one of those people who goes and writes some big back story and agonizes over characters. I think you kind of can get it. For me personally, it's just kind of more instinctive. But I don't have kind of an acting background. I fell into it accidentally.
My background has been very helpful for this experience. But everyone was so accommodating because they knew it's not the most comfortable position to be the new kid.
I'm not from a retail background, but I am a shopper.
Governor Romney has a great business background. He is extremely well educated. He has several degrees from Harvard, including, you know, business and including a law degree.
I found poetry at 12 and 13 and, lo and behold, learned that my attorney father had a background in poetry - as he wore dashikis and Afros in the '70s and named his kids Arabic names. He was a poet and a lot like The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron and all of these folks. He definitely was an artist.
Before the arrival of the Credit Union, people who were from the poor background or a working class background couldn't borrow from banks.
I myself am from a very poor background; I experienced firsthand poverty in this country, and that is not unrelated to my desire, from the moment I became president, to make a priority of poverty reduction in this country.
My background in music is classical - I did graduate school in music. At that time, I was studying composition, but I was studying classical guitar very seriously.
I'm a great audience myself. I tried to keep in the background while others were on, but sometimes I'd just get hysterical.
Africa shares with Asia a common background of colonialism, of exploitation, of discrimination, of oppression. At Bandung, African and Asian States dedicated themselves to the liberation of their two continents from foreign domination and affirmed the right of all nations to develop in their own way, free of any external interference.
That's what happens nowadays with people working on computers. They can so easily fix things with their mouse and take out all the, 'Oh, somebody coughed in the background; we need to take that out' - or somebody hit a bad note. Those are all the best moments.
Man's unique reward, however, is that while animals survive by adjusting themselves to their background, man survives by adjusting his background to himself.
