To have been the first woman premier of Victoria was not only a great opportunity but also a great chance to say to the young women of Victoria - Liberal or Labor - 'You can do it, too.'
The very first time I ever heard anything of mine on the radio, I was in New Jersey, and I was in my teens. I did my first record, which was an old standard called 'My Mother's Eyes.' It was the old Georgie Jessel theme. I heard it on local radio out of Newark. And it was very exciting!
A moment for me that changed everything was hearing my song on the radio for the first time.
Balanchine is the number one influence for me. His work was really musically driven. He and Jerome Robbins were the ones who really showed me that dance could be about the inner relation between movement and music. When I was a student first seeing their work, I was like, 'Oh, this is a thing?'
When I was at the Royal Ballet School, I remember receiving my first eyeshadow palette from Marks & Spencer as a gift. It sparked my interest in beauty, which peaked when I became more involved in theatre and got to experience so many stunning image transformations to suit different productions.
My first job in the States was as a junior fashion editor at 'Harper's Bazaar,' which I enjoyed, but not for all that long because I was fired by the editor in chief, who told me that I was too 'European.'
We've also seen another future we could choose. First of all, we'd have the right to choose. It's an America in which no one can charge us more than men for the exact same health insurance; in which no one can deny us affordable access to the cancer screenings that could save our lives; in which we decide when to start our families.
You can find virtually everybody black back as far as the 1870 census. Why 1870? That's when the ex-slaves first have surnames. But if you find your great-great-grandfather in 1870 and it says he's 50, that means he was born in 1820 and you're back to 1820 already. For an American that's pretty damned good, you know?
I made music with my friend, who we called Isabella Machine to which I was Florence Robot. When I was about an hour away from my first gig, I still didn't have a name, so I thought 'Okay, I'll be Florence Robot/Isa Machine', before realising that name was so long it'd drive me mad.
My first endeavor was to save the core of the German system of justice: the independent judiciary.
When I was first introduced to Buddhism in a high school World Studies class, I dismissed it out of hand. This was during the hedonistic days of the late '60s, and this spiritual path seemed so grim with its concern about attachment and, apparently, anti-pleasure.
You know, people always ask me how I describe my music. First of all I tell them that's their job and then that also one day I hope to have things referred to as Martha Wainwright -esque.
I remember my first lecture on my first day in evolutionary biology, how populations and species change. I sat thinking, 'Why doesn't everyone know this?' I look back on it almost in horror: I came so close to not knowing how exciting our world is.
In my heart, my first desire was to be a dancer. I always wanted to dance and I danced from the time I was 7 till I was well into my 30s.
The size of the effect that we measured from the first event, the merging of two black holes, the actual size of the signal was about one thousandth the size of a proton, what it did to our apparatus.
When Facebook first started, and it was just a social directory for undergrads at Harvard, it would have seemed like such a bad startup idea, like some student side project.
After I graduated from school, I enrolled in the military college, a cadet school. This is the first stage of military training; it instills discipline and various qualities required for military life.
A man always remembers his first love with special tenderness, but after that he begins to bunch them.
It wasn't until I went to college and I got my first motorcycle that I understood the thrill of speed.
At Ellis Island, I mean, you didn't go there if you arrived in first class. It was only the poorest, the people in the worst shape.
The first show I ever did, singing and dancing, was 'Beauty and the Beast.' I was playing Gaston. Gaston has red tights, knee high boots, and it's very physical. I had headaches every day for two months.
I don't have a pet, but I dream of someday getting a pug dog whom I will name Croque Monsieur so that I may alternate between calling him Croque, Monsieur or his full name: Croque Monsieur. I'll more than likely only use his first and last name most often when he's been bad.
I first wrote about Michael Jackson in the 1980s. His skin was growing paler, his features thinner, and his aura more feminine. Some called him a traitor to his race. Some fussed about his gender fluidity. I saw him as a post-modern shape-shifter. But the shifts grew more extreme and mysterious.
The first I bought were records. I don't know which was first, but I feel like it was the same day. It was 'The Muppet Show' soundtrack and Queen's first album, because it was the only one my brother didn't have.
I just moved into the world of Xbox Live. And I've discovered that everyone on the Internet is a lot better than me. I spent half an hour the other day designing a boxer, and I got knocked out twice in the first round.
There are a lot of people who influenced me, nurtured me, helped me along the way. But I can just recall looking back, the first time I got my baseball glove. Put it on the wrong hand, all those kind of things.
It seems to many of us that if we are to avoid the eventual catastrophic world conflict, we must strengthen the United Nations as a first step toward a world government patterned after our own government with a legislature, executive and judiciary, and police to enforce its international laws and keep the peace.
I started playing golf when I was just out of college and starting my career with KPMG. I took a few lessons, and my husband has always loved to give me pointers - for better and for worse! I realized that you could really enhance relationships by being on the course with clients. In fact, my very first golf game was with some clients.
I wrote my first book when I was in my late thirties.
So much of television is incredibly predictable. You watch the first five minutes and you know where it's going to go. If you can just create an element of surprise in both the storytelling and tone of a show, you're going to be way ahead of the pack.
Following a pre-cellphone world of children on an adventure is incredibly appealing for me. These are the kinds of movies I fell in love with and made me want to be a filmmaker in the first place.
I like to come up first of all with a free idea, thinking about and obviously understanding what is necessary for it to become a car.
I had always presumed that my first book would be published, but I never dreamt that I would write 15 bestsellers and have this wonderful life in America that I have entirely built for myself.
When I first got into the league, I just used to run. Just run the route. Really no technique to it. I really couldn't separate myself from the defender.
Growing up in the '70s and '80s when my dad had an art gallery, one of the things that frustrated me was the world seemed so tiny, and to appreciate contemporary art, you needed a history of art, a formal education. I was more interested in the people, and that's why I went into the movie business in the first place.
We pride ourselves on our democratic traditions, but in Canada, women couldn't vote until 1918, Asians until 1948, and First Nations people living on reserves until 1960.
