Well, it's a humor strip, so my first responsibility has always been to entertain the reader... But if, in addition, I can help move readers to thought and judgment about issues that concern me, so much the better.
When I'm deciding to read a book, I never open to the first chapter, because that's been revised and worked over 88 times. I'll just turn to the middle of the book, to the middle of a chapter, and just read a random page and I'll know right away whether this is the real deal or not.
First I made a dress because I was pregnant and I wanted to be the most beautiful pregnant woman. Then I made a sweater because I wanted to have one that wasn't like anyone else's.
My first paying job, when I was 15, I was a day camp counselor.
You know, I once leased a Mercedes because I got a good deal on it because of my first name.
The first album I ever bought with my own money was 'Ten.' Every single song reminds me of my childhood.
The first dolly track was somebody who had the idea to put the camera on a boat on a canal. So the boat would move very slowly but steadily. So they would see all that surrounds you and you'd see the landscape changing slowly. So that was the first time.
Dick Van Dyke was my first idol. He's an amazing physical comedian, like a classic clown, but also very smart and not afraid to show vulnerability.
I wrote a million words in the first year, and I could never have done that outside of prison.
The first game is always the most difficult, for the nerves you have before you begin to play.
I move very slowly. It's usually material first. I sit with the material for a long time.
The question of how the eye works - that is, what happens when a photon of light first impinges on the retina - simply could not be answered at that time.
None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.
My teachers encouraged me to audition for some professional work during our summer vacation. I landed my first job. It was for the National Theatre Company's Mimika Pantomime troupe. I ended up touring with them for the next two years.
On the contrary, it might even be a projection of what the truth is of the Bush Administration's complacency and ineptitude on the terrorism in its first 9 months in office.
I'd like to do my first record I ever made, A Church, a Courtroom, and Then Goodbye.
Start with God - the first step in learning is bowing down to God; only fools thumb their noses at such wisdom and learning.
Religion is part of the human make-up. It's also part of our cultural and intellectual history. Religion was our first attempt at literature, the texts, our first attempt at cosmology, making sense of where we are in the universe, our first attempt at health care, believing in faith healing, our first attempt at philosophy.
I knew the second I finished the first record - 'House Of Balloons' - and had all this material leftover that a trilogy would be best.
When I first started, you couldn't mention divorce or death. You couldn't show smelly socks. You couldn't show a snake. They took a skunk out of my strip one time.
Chocolate is the first luxury. It has so many things wrapped up in it: deliciousness in the moment, childhood memories, and that grin-inducing feeling of getting a reward for being good.
Had I not stepped into the saddle in the first place, entire cultures, histories, and most importantly, profound connections with people and animals whom I now counted as my friends would have otherwise passed by, invisible.
When I first started blogging, I kept it a secret from my friends and then started to show a few people, and it snowballed from there.
I'm on the Facebook board now. Little did they know that I thought Facebook was really stupid when I first heard about it back in 2005.
A youthful mind is seldom totally free from ambition; to curb that, is the first step to contentment, since to diminish expectation is to increase enjoyment.
Since 1935, this has been a pay-as-you-go system, and I always believed when I first started talking about Social Security that there was a little box that had my name on it and it had my benefits for when I retired. That is not true.
All gut strings. That's just the first kind of guitar I played, it was a nylon string guitar. And to me, it's the purest form of guitar making, and I just enjoy doing it.
What do we know about autism in 2013? Autism symptoms generally emerge before age three and usually much earlier, often as language delays or lack of social engagement. Recent research suggests that autism can be detected during the first year of life, even before classic symptoms emerge. Indeed, the symptoms may be a late stage of autism.
My father assigned me to keep his scrapbooks. At first I was interested in reading only his rave notices, but I got interested in reading what the critics were saying about whether the play was good or not.
In the heart of the desert and founded by the first Spanish Conquistadores, Las Vegas has become the entertainment capital of the world, with more than 30 million visitors a year.
I remember when I was in 'Hairspray' - my first Broadway show - I truly was in awe of the voices I got to hear on a nightly basis around me. I'm thinking, 'Wow! Why aren't these people selling millions of records?' They're the ones that are out there, you know, belting their faces off!
I was kind of excited about going to jail the first time and I learnt some great dialogue.
The first voyagers to the stars will be creatures whose life cycle is matched to the voyage: the aeons involved in traversing the galaxy are not daunting to immortal beings. By the end of the third millennium, travel to other stars could be technically feasible. But would there be sufficient motive?
We must first pray, that God would make us wise; before we can wish, he would make us happy.
Nursery rhymes were political when they were first written! To me, that's what it's about: it's about using it to say something more than just what the story is.
You have to first be a writer and somebody who loves to write. If I couldn't travel, I would still write.
