I was fascinated, long before I joined the SNP, in the world around me; current affairs really interested me.
I wrote two plays before I was cast on 'The Neighbors.' They actually got published, which was cool.
In Ethiopia, the black people became Christians 1700 years ago, hundreds of years before Northern Europe turned to Christianity... And here, most of the saints are black.
Actors are programmed to see the worst. If you're talking about an actor's TV series, you say, 'I loved you last night.' And they go, 'What about the week before?' They immediately worry.
Calamari isn't too bad. That's what I thought cuttlefish was gonna be that. I've eaten octopus and eel and shark and sea urchin before, and - and those are good.
It is often when night looks darkest, it is often before the fever breaks that one senses the gathering momentum for change, when one feels that resurrection of hope in the midst of despair and apathy.
When I was signed, that was before the punk thing even happened.
I always say it's very difficult when you're tackling something like 'Spider-Man' or 'Batman' that has been done so many times before.
If I used to say that Indonesia would be free when the corn ripens, I can now say that Indonesia will be free before it blossoms.
You're always trying to do something that, on one hand, honors all those stories, that is still in some way the same character that Stan Lee and Jack Kirby were doing back in the sixties. But, at the same time, you want to be able to tell new stories and not just rehash what's come before.
Before I became a full-time writer, I worked in tech support in those giant cubicle farms you see. I was surrounded by people who played video games all the time - sometimes actually in the call centers, playing online multiplayer games. I saw friends of mine who began to feel that going online was more compelling to them than real life.
I always considered myself very successful even before the success of Secrets and Lies.
Right before I decided to come out, I went on a spiritual retreat called 'Changing the Inner Dialogue of Your Subconscious Mind.' I'd never been to anything like it before, and all my friends were taking bets on how long I'd last with no TV, no radio, no phone. But for me that was the beginning of paying attention to all the little things.
I'd love to live in Ireland but I'd like to live as me, not what someone thinks I am. People don't understand - I lived there before I was famous.
Maybe this is because I'm a comics historian as much as anything else, but I really have a deep-seated respect for the characters that have been around since before I was born and are probably going to outlive me.
I read the 'Twilight' books before the movie and the whole craze happened. And then I loved it. I was in love with Edward before every other girl that says she's in love with him was. Because I read them a long time ago shooting a movie in Salt Lake City, and one of Stephenie Meyer's friends said, 'Make sure you read my friend's book.'
My father never wanted me to be a writer. He didn't - he came to terms with it maybe two years before he died. He wanted me to be a weather girl because when I was growing up, there were very few Latinas on television, and in the early '70s when you first started seeing Latinas on TV, they would be the weather girls.
Some members of the Vienna Philharmonic convinced me to try Bruckner, which I have never done before. And that was interesting to me to have this experience with this orchestra, which knows the repertoire very well, and to be confronted with this knowledge, and to learn from them.
You look at the greatest villains in human history, the fascists, the autocrats, they all wanted people to kneel before them because they don't love themselves enough.
A big fear of working with an actor that's never been a lead in a film before is that you're going to have to work really hard to pull a performance out of her.
We saw firsthand how a collapsed bridge in Skagit County impacted our local economy, which is why we must fix our infrastructure now before it's more expensive to maintain in the future.
My musical taste has always been wide. I started out as a folky before I moved on to blues and soul.
'Fast and Furious' is the only franchise that I've directed that I did not create from scratch. So it definitely was an eye-opening experience for me coming to that world. I had to be respectful of the roles that had been established by the filmmakers before me, and I was cool with that.
I thought I had a handle on my priorities before Elizabeth and I lost our oldest son to stillbirth.
Before 'Coronation Street,' I was a jobbing actor, and after it, I'm a jobbing actor again.
I've stood around bogs wearing half a million dollars' worth of jewelry, up to my knees in the rot, thinking how much more or less the place smelled like a sewer than it did the day before.
I'm very used to working with first time actors - you can just look back at 'E.T.' with Drew Barrymore, and Christian Bale from 'Empire of the Sun,' who'd never made a movie before.
One of the things that has happened for me is that whatever came next was better than what I had before.
Before I really became interested in fashion, all I would look at in a fashion magazine was the ads. It only dawned on me recently that just looking at the ads really doesn't teach you everything you need to know about the fashion world.
Now, you watch cable news, and you know what everybody's going to say before they open their mouth.
I started designing the greenest the most connected home before the iPhone and the iPad.
Long before 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid', 'Dork Diaries', and the graphic novel explosion, only a small press like Tricycle was willing to take a risk on such an innovative format.
Long before, and fully independent of, anything Congress did, President Obama made clear that he was going to preserve the indefinite detention system at Guantanamo even once he closed the camp. President Obama fully embraced indefinite detention - the defining injustice of Guantanamo - as his own policy.
What makes me write is the rhythm of the world around me - the rhythms of the language, of course, but also of the land, the wind, the sky, other lives. Before the words comes the rhythm - that seems to me to be of the essence.
I plan to join the 'SNL' band as a maraca player and stand behind saxophonist Lenny Pickett. That way they will at least cut to me before commercial breaks. I'll be sure to look right into camera.
I meditate and pray before going onstage - it helps me focus.
