I'm not first and foremost interested in story and the what-happens, but I'm interested in who's telling it and how they're telling it and the effects of whatever happened on the characters and the people.
I think women don't grow up with the harsh world of criticism that men grow up with, we are more sensitively treated, and when you first experience the world of film-making you have to develop a very tough skin.
If you had asked me, in the days of me dreaming about what would happen in the future, who I would want to write my first original musical, it would hands-down have been Pasek and Paul.
My best friend and I went to sleep-away camp every summer. We'd share stories of making out with boys, but we never did, so we made it all up. My real first kiss was at a friend's house when I was in junior high. He was such a good kisser, and we're still close friends!
The challenge starts when you first come to Mumbai. But it's momentary if you win an award.
The first time I was flown to L.A. for a screen test was an incredibly nerve-racking experience.
The first time I met Elizabeth Edwards, she greeted me at the door of her home juggling a yogurt in one hand and a Diet Coke in the other.
'The Quiet Ones' was my first film, let alone my first horror film, and I had so much fun. I had such a laugh, every single day. I look like such a feral child in it.
Borrowing something from one art form and relocating it in another always has a whiff of pretension about it, like in books if, instead of 'Chapter One,' you have 'First Movement.'
My father was one of the first Tae Kwon Do Masters to come to the states in the '60s. He had one of the first all-African-American fighting teams, and I was basically raised in a karate studio since I was 3. It's part of my blood, competing, and all that stuff was responsible for a lot of me just growing up.
Following our inner guidance may feel risky and frightening at first, because we are no longer playing it safe, doing what we 'should' do, pleasing others, following rules, or deferring to outside authority.
You're watching the movie for the first time when you're working with the actors in front of the camera. You don't think about how the audience will react. You discover the film.
Do I think I can take 20 carries now? Well, I think finally last week and this is week was probably the first time I could probably say, yeah, I could take 20 carries and go do some damage.
I want history to remember me... not as the first black woman to have made a bid for the presidency of the United States, but as a black woman who lived in the 20th century and who dared to be herself. I want to be remembered as a catalyst for change in America.
When I first came to New York I was a dancer, and a French record label offered me a recording contract and I had to go to Paris to do it. So I went there and that's how I really got into the music business. But I didn't like what I was doing when I got there, so I left, and I never did a record there.
I remember the first time my friend Colin Lewis, who used to be a judge with me on a show on MuchMusic called 'disBAND,' told me, 'I think I just found your next favorite artist to adore.' He sent me The Weeknd, and he was completely spot on. The Weeknd is literally on every playlist I have.
The first time I voted, I voted for Eugene McCarthy and I knew he wouldn't win, but it felt so great to vote for him, to vote for the right guy - the one who wanted peace.
Winning the first championship is a goal for any boxer, and it means a lot to reach it.
I enjoyed mathematics from a very young age. At the beginning of college, I had this illusion, which was kind of silly in retrospect, that if I just understood math and physics and philosophy, I could figure out everything else from first principles.
I really knew I wanted to be Adam, because Adam was the first man. Ant I chose because, if there's a nuclear explosion, the ants will survive.
My first marriage was not happy. I married him because I was impressed that he knew which wines to order and how to leave his visiting card. Ridiculous reasons.
The Puritans' sense of priorities in life was one of their greatest strengths. Putting God first and valuing everything else in relation to God was a recurrent Puritan theme.
I would say in one sentence my goal is to at least be part of the journey to find the unified theory that Einstein himself was really the first to look for. He didn't find it, but we think we're hot on the trail.
The disappointing second novel is measured against the brilliant first novel - often no novel lives up to the first. Literary improvement seems like an unfair expectation.
House was the first film where I had no influence on the script. I had to buy the script with the game rights.
I had done student films for the School Of Visual Arts and for NYU and all these schools in New York, so those were my first film experiences, but they were student films, so I guess they don't really count.
I took a writing class in college, liked it, and my first year out of school I couldn't get a job, so I wrote a play.
We're living through a time where we are fighting wars fostered by politics, admittedly not on the same scale as the First World War, but with equally tragic realities for our soldiers and their families.
Getting rid of the dictator is only a first step in establishing a free society. The dictatorship must also be disassembled.
When I got to Hollywood, at first I couldn't get a lot of jobs. So I grew a beard and look like a really bad Arab, and I started to get a lot of work because that's what they want.
You wonder, how could socialists, true socialists work with Islamists? Because if those Islamists take over, the first thing they're going to do is kill the socialists.
I first considered writing 'New York' in 1991. I'd been in the city for a decade, was married to an American wife, and sending my children to New York schools. I was even on the board of a coop building. But I wasn't sure how to organize such complex material, and for many years I put the project aside.
I think, basically, I am an actor. Sometimes I'm an actor who's writing and sometimes an actor who's directing, but I think if I'm forced to fill out a form for my tax return, 'actor' is the first thing I write down.
I changed my writing style deliberately. My first two novels were written in a very self-consciously literary way. After I embraced gay subject matter, which was then new, I didn't want to stand in its way. I wanted to make the style as transparent as possible so I could get on with it and tell the story, which was inherently interesting.
In my first year or so at the 'Post,' I began to write with some frequency on the least important issues - so-called light editorials. The titles themselves are revealing of just how light: 'On Being a Horse,' 'Brains and Beauty,' 'Mixed Drinks,' 'Lou Gehrig,' and 'Spotted Fever.'
'Inside Out' - that was a really good movie. That's the first animated movie I saw since 'The Lego Movie.'
