Three hundred years ago, during the Age of Enlightenment, the coffee house became the center of innovation.
'La Lupe' is my passion project. I've done it as a one-woman show, but I'm raising money to turn it into a film. It's a story of a Cuban singer who became the Queen of Latin Soul, the first woman on the N.Y. salsa scene.
John Irwin became one of the greatest peace workers in Northern Ireland.
In 1994, Estonia became the first European country to adopt a flat tax, and its 26 percent flat tax dramatically energized what had been a faltering economy. Before adopting the flat tax, the Estonian economy was literally shrinking. In the eight years after 1994, Estonia experienced real economic growth - averaging 5.2 percent per year.
I grew up Jewish, became an atheist and a Marxist, and 28 years ago, at age 26, became a Christian.
At school, I was the classroom clown - I was always being thrown out for being naughty. Before I left, a teacher called me in and suggested I became an actor.
In refugee camps around the world, I met people who were gone. They were still walking around but had lost so much that they were unable to claim any sort of identity. Others I met found who they truly were, and they generally found it through service to others. They became teachers when there was no school, books or pencils.
I became interested in film making at around 16, when I discovered a friend of mine had a HI 8 camera which belonged to his father, which we were forbidden to use.
The Academy Awards were basically created by the industry to promote pictures. They weren't really to acknowledge the performances. Then it became sort of this a great popularity contest and now, it's an incredible show and it's seen all over the world.
I became a vegetarian, and I carried around a suitcase full of vitamins and special drinks everywhere I went.
I think I've always wanted to direct, but I didn't go to film school. I was lucky enough to work in movies, and I think those became my film school in terms of acting and watching directors work and also writing and co-writing and producing.
When I first became a lawyer, only 2% of the bar was women. People would always think I was a secretary. In those days, professional women in the business world wore hats. So I started wearing hats.
The writing became a hobby in the background: it took a back seat to parenthood and being a person and being a human being.
After a lifetime of feeling at home in my plus-size body, I was a 27-year-old having self-esteem issues. Clothes shopping stopped being fun and became a chore; I couldn't wear the curve-showing styles I loved without Spanx - and I worried that my new body would affect my training.
Once I became number one, I started working even harder. I changed my technique, but injuries started creeping in - it was a big mistake, as I was doing something right to get to that spot in the first place.
From that moment on, the newspaper became a highly lucrative investment for those with a talent for making money or for publishers wanting to gain a fortune.
I vowed to myself that when I grew up and became a theoretical physicist, in addition to doing research, I would write books that I would have liked to have read as a child. So whenever I write, I imagine myself, as a youth, reading my books, being thrilled by the incredible advances being made in physics and science.
Without the Fender bass, there'd be no rock n' roll or no Motown. The electric guitar had been waiting 'round since 1939 for a nice partner to come along. It became an electric rhythm section, and that changed everything.
I became number one just after the World Championships in India. I was very young then, and I remember it was just a great feeling, my first World Championship.
During the 1990s, luxury became something exclusive and elitist. I think fashion got lost. It forgot about craft and culture.
Nor can the Apostle mean that Eve only sinned; or that she only was Deceived, for if Adam sinned willfully and knowingly, he became the greater Transgressor.
When I was about seven, one or two people encouraged me, and art became an enormous and important refuge. By adolescence, I was absolutely passionate about it and felt those paintings and those painters, whether they lived a few hundred years ago or were still alive, were somehow my companions.
As the years passed, and I was nine, 10, 11 years old, it became obvious I was going to start up a business of some sort.
Remember Robin Williams's great work as the voice of the genie in Disney's 'Aladdin'? Because he wanted to leave something wonderful behind for his kids, he said, he did the voice for a cut-rate fee of $75,000, far below his usual $8 million payday. But then something happened: The movie became a huge hit, raking in $504 million.
The IT bubble is the IT bubble, and of course, we became a company that contracted dramatically in 2001 and 2002: we basically came down by 45,000 people - a dramatic ramp-down.
Change is one of the only constants in Buddhism; as meditation became the way I breathed in the days, this became apparent.
We undertook a huge internal transformation to sharpen our customer focus, step up innovation, improve productivity to ensure competitiveness, change our culture, and simplify our ways of working so that our size and scale became a competitive advantage rather than a bureaucratic hangover after years of diversification.
I think that the reason I became an actor, probably, underneath it, was that I spent my life acting normal.
To me, in retrospect, it was amazing that 'Seinfeld' was a show that had such mass appeal. At first it was a disaster in the ratings, but then it became a cultural phenomenon. I don't know if that's possible anymore, but I don't try for that.
You don't lose weight by watching someone else exercise. You don't learn by watching someone else solve problems. It became clear to me that the only way to do online learning effectively is to have students solve problems.
Writing so that I can act became a way of having not more control over my future but not having to wait for permission. You can choose yourself. Hmm, who should play this part? I nominate me!
I was always the observer, trying to understand what was going on. I was always the new kid. Writing became my safe place.
My dad bought me a dartboard for my 11th birthday, and I became intrigued by the game.
The world was not supportive. They look at me as a joke for 13 to 14 years until I could prove feasibility; then I had competitors. Those that laughed at me became my competitors.
My heart started running away, like a pack of horses. Then it slowed down and became irregular.
It's destiny that pushed me towards showbiz. I wanted to start off as a technician, but out of compulsion, I became an actor.
