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.'
‐‐ Dorothy Hodgkin
I first met Walt Disney 25 or 30 years ago.
‐‐ Paul Winchell
I first moved to Denver to work with a group called YWAM, 'Youth With a Mission.' I was a kid - I was 18 - and did some work with homeless people. Really, trying to convert people is sort of an awful position to find yourself in, so I quickly, on my own, grew out of religious ideas.
‐‐ Nathaniel Rateliff
I first noticed my varicose veins when I was pregnant with my second child, and I'd always thought that it was something that affected older, inactive people. I looked at my lifestyle and thought, 'I can't be a candidate for this.' Eventually, the pain became something I couldn't ignore.
‐‐ Summer Sanders
I first picked up a guitar when I was ten years old; my parents surprised me with it for my tenth birthday. I started taking lessons when I was thirteen, but only for a few months, and then I just kept teaching myself.
‐‐ Alessia Cara
I first picked up a violin aged five - I just assumed everyone played.
‐‐ Andre Rieu
I first pitched the idea of doing a series of cartoons based on Bible stories. They didn't much like it.
‐‐ Joseph Barbera
I first played the Royal Albert Hall when I was 14. I was a violinist with the Birmingham Schools Concert Orchestra, and we travelled down from the Midlands for the last night of the School Proms. We played some pieces from the Harry Potter films, and the violin parts were really hard.
‐‐ Laura Mvula
I first read about hypnotism at school, and I used to do tricks like getting a really skinny guy to arm wrestle the local bully.
‐‐ Bernard Sumner
I first read 'An American Tragedy' in college, and in my entire life I had never read anything so painful.
‐‐ Robert Gottlieb
I first read Dostoyevsky when I was 14 years old and was entranced. Dostoyevsky truly is a writer for 14-year-olds, and I mean that in the most approving way - approving of his energy, and rage, his endless pessimism, and endless innocence.
‐‐ Joshua Cohen
I first read Harper Lee's 'To Kill a Mockingbird' as a teen in school, like you did. I read the book alone, eating lunch at my locker, neatly scored oranges my mother divided into five lines with a circle at the top, so my fingers could dig more easily into the orange skin. To this day, the smell of oranges reminds me of 'Mockingbird.'
‐‐ Margaret Stohl
I first read Heinlein when I was very young.
‐‐ Pamela Dean
I first read 'Madame Bovary' in my teens or early twenties.
‐‐ Lydia Davis
I first read science fiction in the old British Chum annual when I was about 12 years old.
‐‐ A. E. van Vogt
I first read 'The Lord of the Rings' as an adolescent. It's a dense novel, a sprawling, complex monster of a book populated with a prolific number of characters caught up in a narrative structure that, frankly, does not lend itself to conventional storytelling.
‐‐ Peter Jackson
I first read 'The Scarlet Letter' when I was fifteen. In it, I found a familiar vision of religious intolerance to the one around me. I grew up in the 1980s, when televangelists, with their fluffed up hair and their tears, self-righteously denounced all kinds of sinners, reserving a special, full-throated enthusiasm for gay people.
‐‐ David Ebershoff
I first saw Arnold Palmer when I was just a kid and he came to Columbus to play in a tournament. I watched him on the driving range hit balls that day. We went on to become great friends.
‐‐ Jack Nicklaus
I first saw 'The Dinner Party' in 2007 at the Brooklyn Museum in New York City. While perusing the Heritage Panels, which honor 999 women who have made important contributions to Western history, I came upon the names of two sisters, Sarah and Angelina Grimke.
‐‐ Sue Monk Kidd
I first saw the island of Noirmoutier when I was two weeks old. I think it's probably safe to say that I didn't fully appreciate it at the time; but I grew to love it as year after year I spent holidays there at my grandparents' cottage.
‐‐ Joanne Harris
I first saw the light in the city of Boston in the year 1857.
‐‐ Edward Bellamy
I first saw the ocean as a kid. We would drive from Arizona in the summer and arrive as the sun was starting to come down over the hill near Laguna in southern California. We would always sing a song, and it was a big joyous family moment when we came over the hill.
‐‐ Ted Danson
I first saw 'They Shoot Horses, Don't They?' when I was very young. Its transporting qualities were so strong that I felt like I had lived it. Only recently, with adult eyes, was I able to metabolize how tragic a tale it really is.
‐‐ Jake Paltrow
I first saw 'West Side Story' on stage in 1958. I was in the army, having been conscripted while under contract to MGM. I caught the musical in New York, fell in love with it, bought the album, and memorised the whole thing.
‐‐ Russ Tamblyn
I first started acting in primary school, just doing little plays. And from the moment I began, something just went 'click' inside me. Suddenly I wasn't shy anymore. Instead I felt confident and happy. I can remember the enormous sense of relief it gave me. I loved the feeling of making people laugh.
‐‐ Sally Hawkins
I first started actually playing guitar when I was eleven years old. I had some neighborhood friends who told me they were starting a band and needed a guitarist. I told my folks, and by the next day I had a guitar lesson set up with a local teacher.
‐‐ Darren Robinson
I first started asking big questions when I was 12, and by big questions, I mean, 'Why are we here? What is this business? We're alive for a few short decades and then poof, we're out of here.'
‐‐ Barbara Ehrenreich
I first started doing hidden-camera segments on 'The Tonight Show With Jay Leno.' He was the coolest guy in the world to work for because he understands the creative process, and he had total trust. And he just let me make up whatever I wanted; I experimented and tried and played. We had a lot of fun over there.
‐‐ Michael Carbonaro
I first started doing some somewhat technology-based shows in the '80s. If you wanted to get real technical about it, back in the '70s I used to open up with Utopia with just me on the stage with a four-track tape recorder. So, technically, I've been using the help of various devices pretty much throughout my career.
‐‐ Todd Rundgren
I first started going to Chelsea games in the mid-Nineties when I lived off the North End Road, ten minutes' walk from Stamford Bridge.
‐‐ George Osborne
I first started going to shows when I was about 16 - seeing local bands. I mean, I loved music before that, and I played a bit of guitar when I was younger and thought maybe I'd become a guitar teacher or something, but when I saw other kids doing it, I was like, 'Whoa, these are great bands! I can do it, too.'
‐‐ Mac DeMarco
I first started playing in piano bars for three reasons - to make money, to be in the company of my friends - and also to hook up with young girls. I always knew, even before I played in piano bars, about the effect of my voice.
‐‐ Andrea Bocelli
I first started to sing when I started to talk. As soon as I could form words and sounds together, I was singing.
‐‐ Leah LaBelle
I first started using social media when I was 12 or something - not publicly; I had private accounts.
‐‐ Lily-Rose Depp
I first started wearing fragrance when I was thirteen or fourteen, and the smell was candy-like. They were in very colorful bottles, like turquoise and pink. By the time I was sixteen or seventeen, it got more girly and more floral.
‐‐ Blake Lively
I first started working in film when I was 17. I was a director's assistant, an editor.
‐‐ Mathieu Amalric
I first started writing fiction in college because I was attracted to beautiful sentences. I loved to read them. I wanted to write them.
‐‐ Karen Thompson Walker
I first started writing historical fiction in the late '70s and kept pictures of Kathleen Woodiwiss and Rosemary Rogers on my refrigerator until my first book was published by Avon in 1982. The biggest advantage of this genre for me is that it allows me to blend fact and fiction.
‐‐ Virginia Henley
I first thought about becoming a writer after the age of 30, which is rather late, I'd say. In my 20s, I wasn't especially good at anything, and I didn't have a lot of experiences. I was just a young woman without a good job.
‐‐ Natsuo Kirino
I first thought about doing a project about Anna Wintour and 'Vogue' when I read an article in 'New York Magazine' about the Metropolitan Museum Costume Institute Ball, the annual fundraising gala that Anna oversees. It created such a fascinating portrait that I couldn't help but be compelled.
‐‐ R. J. Cutler
I first thought maybe I'd do a banjo presentation record, where I'd play a couple of songs and get a bunch of other players to do the rest. Then I realized I had enough of my own songs to do an album of them.
‐‐ Steve Martin
I first travelled to Africa at the end of 1996 and was immediately captivated. I had planned on a three-week trip, and I ended up staying two months.
‐‐ Susan Minot
I first visited Kurdistan in 2003. I arrived in the town of Sulaimaniyah, courtesy of smugglers who drove me across the border from Iran. Sulaimaniyah was a small, charming provincial Kurdish town.
‐‐ Luke Harding
I first visited the Toronto fest in 1979, its fourth edition, when it was known as the Festival of Festivals and had an audience of about 40,000. I happily returned to the 10-day skein nearly every year thereafter, as attendance swelled to 400,000 and it grew into the most influential film festival in North America, perhaps the world.
‐‐ Richard Corliss
I first wanted to be a psychiatrist. I decided against that in medical school when I discovered that psychiatrists didn't, in reality, do what they did on TV.
‐‐ Ben Carson
I first wanted to be an actress after seeing a play - not a movie.
‐‐ Kim Cattrall
I first watched 'Adhe Adhure' in college. I loved it, and it stayed with me ever since. I decided that I would some day direct this play - not in English, but in Hindi.
‐‐ Lillete Dubey
I first went into social services, and when I did my Ph.D. I looked at intellectual diversity rights as they apply to biological material. At the time, I never thought of what I'm doing now as a career. I thought I wouldn't find employment doing this.
‐‐ Cary Fowler
I first went on the road with the Rolling Stones in the year of our Lord, 1969. But my grandfather gave me away to a drummer when I was 15 years old.
‐‐ Bobby Keys