I attended Amherst College from 1951 to 1955. The first two years were a revelation. There were innumerable exchanges with brilliant classmates, among them the playwright Ralph Allen, the classics scholar Robert Fagles, and the composer Michael Sahl.
On 'Senna,' it got to the point where there was so much footage that our first editor had the wild suggestion that we only use the archive.
Mehmet was the first sultan, and one of the first Muslims anywhere, to defy religious tradition by allowing his portrait to be made.
I'm not in the business of being 'friendly.' First and foremost, I'm a journalist. My business is the truth. Now, I happen to be other things, too - a pop-culture phenomenon, the most in-demand speaker on the campus lecture circuit, whatever. But I believe in facts.
My first car was, as depicted in 'Sleepwalk with Me,' my mother's '92 Volvo station wagon that had 80,000 miles on it, and I had put 40,000 miles on it, so by the time it retired it had 120,000, and I basically killed it. It served me well, and my mechanic was always very angry with me because I just didn't properly care for it.
My mom is just authentically herself all the time. She loves herself. She loves her sense of humor. She brings people in when she talks. She brings people in when she laughs. Watching her, I think that that's when I first learned and was encouraged to be myself and to sort of love and live in that way.
I'm all for having an empowered first lady who can really use that position to improve conditions, be a role model and make change.
Building advanced AI is like launching a rocket. The first challenge is to maximize acceleration, but once it starts picking up speed, you also need to focus on steering.
When I first started at HSN, I knew that retailers would have to be poised to take advantage of technology and the rapidly changing ways in which people shop. It was one of the things that drew me to the company.
I speak from a nerd's perspective because I've been watching anime since I was a kid. I grew up on 'Speed Racer' and 'Star Blazers' and 'Battle of the Planets,' and those were some of my first A) cartoons and B) introduction to Japanese couture before I even knew they were Japanese.
The magic of landing my first role on Broadway went 'poof' in a matter of a few weeks.
One of my first investments was $100,000 in a Web-based calendar startup - and I lost every dollar.
I wrote four novels under the name Amy Silver. The first one was commissioned, and I was given basically the whole plot and the characters. They told me what to do, and I went straight away and did it. After that, I continued, and I was coming up with more my own ideas, although they did steer me.
When you first start, you just want to get a job. It goes from that to really deciding what kind of work you want to do and what kind of actor you want to be - and it only gets harder.
On the corner of 57th and 7th Avenue sits the most famous concert hall in the world. No less a figure than when Tchaikovsky led the first performances in 1891. Virtually every major artist has performed there. There is simply no place like it. The first time I stepped foot in Carnegie Hall was in 1964.
I've been very fortunate with my three spec scripts - which is sort of my thematic trilogy of the American Frontier. With 'Sicario', 'Hell or High Water' and then 'Wind River' - which is the third - there were no rewrites. It was the first draft for all three.
Once you have a central character who announces in the first five minutes of the show that he feels whooped by life and that he's had enough, I'm in. I'm hooked.
When I visited Chechnya, I was taken aback at first because people would regularly make jokes about kidnapping me.
'Sit Here and Cry' was one of the first songs I wrote with that overdramatic sarcastic dry sense of humor, which is why the energy of the song doesn't necessarily reflect the subject matter.
The first person besides my mother who believed in me was a man whose last name I never knew. He was my boss, the manager of Swenson's Ice Cream shop.
I got married at 20, and I was not a real mature 20. My first child was born when I was 21.
Being in front of the camera - first of all, when I wanted to get into television, it was as a producer. I never had an idea that I would do anything in front of the camera, and that kind of happened by accident. But I wanted to be a producer or give me a job with the Yankees or play for the Knicks. I was a sports nut when I was a kid.
Fire is our first form of technology.
Grunge was so self-consciously lowbrow and nonaspirational that it seemed, at first, impervious to the hype and glamour normally applied swiftly to any emerging trend. But sure enough, grunge anthems found their way onto the soundtracks of television commercials, and Dodge Neons were hawked by kids in flannel shirts saying, 'Whatever.'
I think is important to give a child room to make mistakes in order to learn. Mistakes build wings so later in life they can fly and go on their own. Let them fall once in awhile... Be their friend and parent as well. When they're in trouble, they will come to you first. Don't try to change their opinion.
I've always been interested in the office. I was a secretary a long time ago, and I've always been into paperwork. My first secretarial job was 1965 or 1966.
At first, I did have that thought, like, 'Oh crap, what are we going to do after?' Then I realized 'Girl in a Country Song' was an honest, truthful song, and we were telling our truth, and that's all we have to do - write songs that are true and tell our stories.
First you help yourself, and then you can help everybody.
My first novel - the novel I wrote before 'Midnight's Children' - feels, to me, now, very - I mean, I get embarrassed when I see people reading it. You know, there are some people who, bizarrely, like it. Which I'm, you know, I'm happy for.
The idea that the rest of the world was somehow being held hostage by the Arab-Israeli conflict once had a minimal basis in reality. In the first 20 years of Israel's existence, every Arab country was in an active state of war with the Jewish state.
Don't let a temporal way to connect be a poor substitute for an eternal way. Without first being connected vertically to God, all the social networking contacts in the world won't be enough.
If I'm elected president, let me tell you about my first day in office. The first thing I intend to do is to rescind every illegal and unconstitutional executive action taken by Barack Obama.
I mean, I'm married first of all to one of, if not the most wonderful women in the world. She is everything - funny, attractive, hard-working, she has integrity, she loves me to bits.
I was the first one to say that there could be comfortable, sexy shoes, and it's a big part of our brand.
Racial humor was about 35% of my act when I first started. But I realized that it was a crutch. What brought it home was when another comedian said to me, 'If you changed color tomorrow, you wouldn't have any material.' He meant it as a put-down, but I took it as a challenge.
I never write in a linear way. And I tell students not to. You can only know so much about a book when you first start.
