My daddy wanted me to be a farmer; feel the smoothness of Alabama clay and become one of the first blacks in my town to own land. But, I was worried about my history being caked with that southern clay, and I subscribed to a different kind of teaching and learning in my bones and in my spirit.
I think I first got into acting through church. I would go to these church retreats, and they would tell us to make a skit or make a video and present it to the rest of the group. And I started doing that. And I fell in love with it.
I've always been a big fan of Rachel McAdams. I saw her for the first time in 'Mean Girls,' then I saw her in 'The Notebook.' I've always wanted a role like 'The Notebook,' this heartfelt love story. I think Rachel's so incredible.
I love pop music. I listen to it; I think you can hear it in my songwriting and my album. I'd definitely say it's country-pop music, but it's country first.
Living is like working out a long addition sum, and if you make a mistake in the first two totals you will never find the right answer. It means involving oneself in a complicated chain of circumstances.
It gives a fellow an awful shiver to hear the first shovelful of dirt and gravel rattle down upon the coffin; but after it is covered, it falls gently and makes no sound. The feeling of rest is perfect. There's no more nagging, no more pain!
The first chance I had to go to Japan, which was in the early nineties, I went to a Noh play. I thought, 'This is very, very slow.' I noticed lots of people falling asleep. I didn't really know what was going on; I was getting a little sleepy myself. Then the more I studied it, the more fascinated I got.
You forget that sometimes comedy is just a big night out for people. Almost every show, people come up to me and go, 'This is the first comedy show I've ever seen,' so you want to do well. If you do horribly at somebody's first time seeing live stand-up, well, you've not only tainted yourself, you've tainted a whole art form.
Make God first priority. He's worth it!
First of all, no candidate is going to win by catering to the alleged Occupy Wall Street vote.
When 'Twin Peaks' happened the first time, I was a stage actor in Seattle. I was called in for an audition for this pilot, and at that time, it was called 'Northwest Passage,' and nobody knew anything. I thought, 'Oh, okay, Lewis and Clark.' And from that moment, I fell down the rabbit hole.
The first money I ever had was when I received an award from the American Association of University Women.
The position of vice president does not exist in France; neither does a role comparable that of the first lady of the United States.
I was 20, I was an amateur from 14 but my first professional role was at 22.
As any student of literature knows, the books that last are often not the books that are most popular when they are written. Both 'Moby Dick' and 'The Great Gatsby' were complete failures, critically and commercially, when they first appeared.
I was first in line for the iPhone, but I'm not a fanboy of any company - I'm in favor of anything that's best of breed.
I wrote a novel about an economic/environmental collapse titled 'Soft Apocalypse,' and that's definitely the sort I'm best prepared for. To write the novel, I did a lot of reading on what we might expect, so at the first sign, I'm ready to convert all of my assets to gold and ammo and stock up on freeze-dried food.
I know we can fix our problems. When there are people in the room who care more about doing the job they were elected to do than they worry about winning reelection, it is possible to work together, achieve principal compromise, and get results for the people who give us these jobs in the first place.
I've got all my old laptops going back to my first, which was so fancy at the time, in '93 or '94, but now it's just like a doorstop. One day I said, 'I'll go in and get all my old documents in there.' The cords and the wires are all gone, the discettes you need are gone. Meanwhile the little electrons are starting to wither away.
I finally said, 'I don't care if you're the first person in your family to be a lawyer.' Everybody thought what I was doing was really exciting, but it was not moving me one bit. And that's when I decided to join city government in Chicago, and that changed my life.
As every teenage girl, I was absolutely obsessed with The Beatles, and the first record I bought was 'Please Please Me.' I'd have been 13 at the time.
We were Londoners for about seven years during the decade they called the naughties. My first son, Finn, was born over there. He's actually very proud of that fact.
The experience of writing 'The Kite Runner' is one I will always think back on with fondness. There is an energy, a romance in writing the first novel that can never be duplicated again.
We're scared to death to try new things because we think we have to get it right the first time.
I went to school at the San Francisco Art Institute, thinking I was going to become an art teacher. Within the first six months I was there, I was told that I couldn't be an art teacher unless I became an artist first.
When I was a kid, I went from ground zero to Pluto. The first place I played was the Houston Astrodome.
Dubois was the first black American to graduate from Harvard. He was accepted within the northern white intellectual circles as one of the 'best of his race.' As an avowed socialist, he was the only black member of the original 19 wealthy socialist founders of the NAACP.
Conservatives are routinely pilloried on television. A&E likely greenlit 'Duck Dynasty' in the first place because executives believed Americans would laugh at the redneck antics of the self-described 'white trash' family.
I loved my soap days. I really loved them. A Martinez and Marcy Walker taught me how to act, basically. All those people pulled together and helped get me started. Like, showed me how to hit my mark, made me do this, made me do that. That was my first long-running professional gig. And it was like, they were just - great, great with me.
1977 is the year I made my first movie. Shortly after, I was offered quite nice roles in television. The general consensus among everyone was that I'd be out of my mind to do that.
My very first job was working on a TV show that was a prestigious TV show and well done - was called 'Family.'
When I first started acting, I was just crap.
I think 'Shark Tank' is targeting companies that are really trying to raise their very first dollar. A lot of them aren't really tech focused. We're definitely going after companies that are building real technology, either software or hardware, they probably have raised a couple hundred thousand already.
I loved 'Fantasia' as a kid because it filled me with wonder, enchantment and awe. It was my first real introduction into classical music. It was totally inspiring to me.
I always loved to gamble. I never got close to a horse. Fate dealt me a terrible blow when it gave me a good horse the first time out. I thought how easy this is. Now I love being around them.
When I first started out in Houston, it was theater or bust. And I loved it. I still love it. And then I went to undergraduate and graduate school for acting.
