I started singing at age three - I opened my mouth some time, singing along to the radio, and my parents were like, 'Wow! You have a really great voice!'
Sometimes, when I see my granddaughters make small discoveries of their own, I wish I were a child.
Israel has a sizeable nuclear arsenal and could retaliate if it were attacked.
I grew up in an non-athletic family, where my parents were interested in music, in literature, in education and art.
I was doing these performance art pop music pieces in the city. And they were a bit on the eccentric side I suppose. So people started to call me Gaga after the Queen song 'Radio Gaga.'
Look, if I were alone in the world, I would have the right to choose despair, solitude and self-fulfillment. But I am not alone.
Yeah; I'm a much better blues player than anybody knows, but being in the kind of group I'm in, we were always trying to make popular records.
I came across the Indonesian genocide in 2001, when I found myself making a film in a community of survivors. They were plantation workers, and it turned out they were struggling to organize a union.
Suddenly, the screens were dominated by American entertainment to the extent of something like 95 percent. As a result, audiences turned away from the kinds of films that we used to make.
But that we didn't have the level of experience in terms of working in the industry so you weren't sure and you needed to see it and this is an industry that the more you work the better you get and that the more opportunities you have the better you get.
My father always taught by telling stories about his experiences. His lessons were about morality and art and what insects and birds and human beings had in common. He told me what it meant to be a man and to be a Black man. He taught me about love and responsibility, about beauty, and how to make gumbo.
My parents were of the generation who thought they were the children of a free Czechoslovakia, the only democracy in central Europe.
My father was a great example of a strong and good man and Christian man, and my mother taught all my six sisters how to be young ladies and mothers and how to take care of your family. And so I think they were - they still are - great examples for all of us to their kids and to the world, too.
We campaigned on the fact that we were going to have to take difficult decisions because of the state of the public finances. When we got into government we discovered that actually the public finances were in an even worse state than we thought.
The old days were the old days. And they were great days. But now is now.
You can go online now and find really thoughtful, in-depth, considered, well-informed communities around virtually any issue. If it's your issue, there are now new ways of mobilising knowledge that weren't there before. There are real bodies of significant knowledge on the web that are valuable that we haven't done nearly enough with.
When we were starting off as kids, just the idea of maybe going to do this as a living instead of getting what we thought was going to be a boring job, was exciting.
Back then, as a kid, you made a choice of who you liked, and it was either us or 'Take That.' And if you liked 'East 17', it showed you knew what was going on, you were clued up, had better taste in music.
When I was on stage with the Spice Girls, I thought people were there to see the other four and not me.
This Old Testament - containing error, folly, absurdity and immorality - is by English statute law declared to be of divine authority, a blasphemy - if there were anyone to be blasphemed - blacker and more insolent than any word ever written or penned by the most hotheaded Freethinker.
There were some summers when every boy in Ayrshire seemed to be playing golf, and my dad taught me. But he was a terrible teacher - of everything. Learning to drive with him almost killed me. He was the world's most impatient man - awful short fuse.
I tried reading Hilbert. Only his papers published in mathematical periodicals were available at the time. Anybody who has tried those knows they are very hard reading.
My parents lived in a poor rural community on the Eastern Shore, and schools were still segregated. And I remember when lawyers came into our community to open up the public schools to black kids.
My parents were entrepreneurs. They ran a small ad agency in upstate New York.
I knew I was going from the flock of Christ and had no resolution to return, hence serious reflections were uneasy to me, and youthful vanities and diversions were my greatest pleasure.
I would say that my parents were supportive of me.
If all misfortunes were laid in one common heap whence everyone must take an equal portion, most people would be contented to take their own and depart.
We cannot calculate the numbers of people who left, fled or were fished out of Europe just ahead of the Holocaust.
My wife Juliana and I first saw Eurovision while on our honeymoon in Greece in 2006, and we were amazed by it. They basically recreate a music video onstage, and pyro cannons, LED video screens, background dancers, fireworks, costume changes, and wind machines are their tools.
I hate pride, but if I were going to be proud of anything it would have to be something I'd done myself. Race pride is kind of stupid.
With no other security forces on hand, U.S. military was left to confront, almost alone, an Iraqi insurgency and a crime rate that grew worse throughout the year, waged in part by soldiers of the disbanded army and in part by criminals who were released from prison.
From the ship all things were taken out, so that the clothes which I took with me on my back I only had.
I think my differences were, and my differences still are, that I don't really approach fashion in a fashiony way.
The owners and managers were too stupid to realize we had brains.
We were ordered out to quell an uprising of the Indians, and were out for several days, had numerous skirmishes during which six of the soldiers were killed and several severely wounded.
They were some of the best years of my life, and I'm so thankful I was able to go to Stanford.
