I first met the subject of X-ray diffraction of crystals in the pages of the book W. H. Bragg wrote for school children in 1925, 'Concerning the Nature of Things.'
In the knockout tournaments, it's futile to prepare for a grand finale. You may have worked out many strategies for the final. But you may lose in the first round itself.
I'm actually from Mt. Kisco, New York, which is in Westchester County, and when I auditioned for 'Dukes,' I told them I was from Snailville, Georgia, which doesn't exist, and I'd just graduated first in my class from the Georgia School of High Performance Driving, which also doesn't exist. But they bought it.
There is not less wit nor less invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought.
I remember the beginnings of the Kurzweil reading machine. I was one of the first to meet Ray Kurzweil and purchase the reading machine in Boston. To think that the machine was at least two and a half large suitcases at the time, and now you have a camera and it takes a picture and you have sound.
My whole career began because I was always putting my music on the Internet. By the time I had my first tour, I had an audience everywhere I went, because people were listening online.
When I got the role in 'Homeland,' it really opened something up. Other people respected me more as an actor, doors were opened, and I understood for the first time that it wasn't personal. All that rejection wasn't personal.
I've found in the past that the more closely I identify with the heroine, the less completely she emerges as a person. So from the first novel I've been learning techniques to distance myself from the characters so that they are not me and I don't try to protect them in ways that aren't good for the story.
My husband is my part of my greatest joys, so it doesn't feel like work or like I'm balancing anything. My husband and my kids absolutely come first, so work is just something where I figure out where it will fit.
Years ago, when I was in Siena for the first time, I saw the works of Duccio, whose deeply emotional painting from the thirteenth century has never left me.
In 1977, when I started my first job at the Federal Reserve Board as a staff economist in the Division of International Finance, it was an article of faith in central banking that secrecy about monetary policy decisions was the best policy: Central banks, as a rule, did not discuss these decisions, let alone their future policy intentions.
If somebody says 'singer-songwriter' to me, the first person I think of is James Taylor. There are plenty of modern singer-songwriters, but there is something about James Taylor that has always resonated with me.
Corporate career is like my wife, and writing is my girlfriend. My priority is the first but enjoy doing the second, as I have taken to writing as a stress-beater.
Food makes me happy. Make me work round the clock, but just feed me first!
I'm going into my first Olympics, whereas people I'm racing against are going into their third and fourth and probably last Olympics. So there's more pressure on them to perform. I've still got a whole future ahead of me. I am not even the Olympic champ.
I think Phil Dick was particularly interesting in that, first of all, he was a very modern man and a very modern thinker, but I don't know what demons drove him.
Let me first say that I don't think the millennium target of cutting global poverty in half is an impossible or abstract target. I think it is a real and achievable goal.
Working 40 hours a week used to mean a minimum standard of living and a foothold on the first rung of the economic ladder to the middle class.
When, over fifty years ago, I first became interested in economics - as a discipline that provided the key to social structure and social problems - it never crossed my mind that one day I might be the honored recipient of a Nobel Memorial Prize.
When I started formulating the first Frank comic, I knew I wanted it to be something that was beyond time and specific place. I felt that having the characters speak would tie it to 20th-century America, because that would be the idiom of the language they would use, the language I use.
In first grade, I told my friends I had a third story in my house filled with jewels and lions.
I started this charity, Fashion for Relief, in 2005, after Hurricane Katrina happened. New Orleans was actually the first place I visited in the United States. It was one of my first big jobs, a shoot for British 'Elle.' It was April 14, 1986.
I was a huge Bowie fan since I was 12 years old. That was the first 'punk' rock I got into in the Seventies. I didn't find out about a lot of the other stuff that was going on, like New York Dolls and Roxy Music, until a lot later.
'Show up at the desk' is one of the first rules of writing, but for 'Wolf Hall' I was about 30 years late.
I just realized one day that I was so unhappy. And not only that, but I didn't even like the person that I was. I didn't even know who I was. And so 'Shatter Me' is about first discovering what was under the shell and then learning to love that person that was under it. And then not being afraid to break free.
Strangely enough, the first character in Fried Green Tomatoes was the cafe, and the town. I think a place can be as much a character in a novel as the people.
In her previous novels, Maggie O'Farrell has often measured the distance between intimates and the unexpected intimacy of distance - geographic, temporal, cultural. In 'The Hand That First Held Mine' and 'The Distance Between Us,' characters separated by many miles or many years turn out to be joined in ways they never anticipated.
I thought I'd write a massive postmodern novel about Richard the Lionheart and Robin Hood, but it turns out they couldn't have met because the first mention of Robin Hood appears 60 years after Richard died.
I did a lot of work with myself over the course of being pregnant and the first few months of being pregnant. It's nice, the pace of being pregnant; it gives you a long time to not just germinate a baby but germinate the mother that you're gonna be.
After Fergie and Prince Andrew honeymooned at Le Touessrok in Mauritius, Bobby, my late husband, and I were first to stay in their suite. We enjoyed the benefits - all the spoils and the special luxuries. We practically had our own private beach, and it was most romantic.
I'm the oldest of six children and I had my own first baby when I was 23. So I've always been interested in babies, and I had lots of opportunities to watch them.
When I first started in Malaysia, having a Muslim Malay girl singing and holding a guitar was new to everyone. Even Muslims there had issues with it; they found it weird.
If I hadn't had a childhood career, I probably would've signed a contract with the first person I came across.
I mean, I can tell within the first two minutes if I'm into someone or not. I can always tell if I get butterflies.
When I first set out to do it, I wanted to be a working actor, and now it seems like it's superseded even my dreams.
All of us that have teams want to pick the right people. I've thought a lot about that. In the NFL, we've got 13 scouts traveling the country. We're trying to pick 22 year-olds coming out of college who will be successful in the NFL. It's very hard to do. What I've learned is it's always character first.
