I once did a three-hour interview with Radio Oxford only to be told the microphone hadn't picked me up.
‐‐ Noam Chomsky
I once did an event with Ian Rankin where he said he didn't really need to do much background research because his books are set in the present, and I just thought: 'You lucky, lucky beast!' because as a historical novelist, I live constantly on the edge of wondering whether tissues had been invented.
‐‐ Sara Sheridan
I once didn't work out for six weeks. It took me for ever to get the weight off.
‐‐ David Hasselhoff
I once died my hair blonde, and it looked like an orangey-red carrot top. It was the '80s, and I was trying to look like George Michael. At the time, the ladies loved it, and I loved it too!
‐‐ Nigel Barker
I once dieted so religiously I quit eating in church.
‐‐ Zig Ziglar
I once dreamed a whole short story. Wrapped in its peculiar atmosphere, as if draped in clouds, I walked entranced to my desk at about 4 A.M. and typed it on to the screen.
‐‐ Hilary Mantel
I once drove a pair of horses from New York to Vicksburg, and to this day I can almost map out that country as I saw it then, with its hills and valleys, villages and rivers. Yes, I naturally attribute something of my success in railroad building to the interest I take in such things.
‐‐ Collis Potter Huntington
I once fell 20 feet from a tree, was knocked unconscious, and when I picked myself up and straggled home, my parents thought I was making it up. However, when my brother and I fabricated a story about an encounter with a bear, they believed that! So maybe I learned very early on that fiction was more interesting to listeners!
‐‐ Sharon Creech
I once gave a talk at a girls' school and, once I'd finished, 29 out of the 30 girls wanted to be film directors. I think that's where we need to get girls interested in making films. We need to give them the idea that they can, that it's one of the things on their horizon.
‐‐ Beeban Kidron
I once got a huge, expensive flower arrangement from a person I didn't like, who sent it out of pure guilt. It had a hideous bird-of-paradise in the middle, and I thought it would never fade and die. I hated it.
‐‐ Maeve Binchy
I once got a letter from a woman who told me she was 90. She said if she were 30 years younger, I would have had to watch out. I guess 60 seems really young when you're 90. She said she would eat me with a spoon.
‐‐ David James Elliott
I once got my stiletto caught in my horse's tail on stage and went flying into the audience. It was a mental gig, so I think the crowd thought it was part of the show.
‐‐ Alison Goldfrapp
I once had a boyfriend who couldn't write unless he was wearing a necktie and a dress shirt, which I thought was really weird, because this was a long time ago, and no one I knew ever wore dress shirts, let alone neckties; it was like he was a grown-up reenacter or something.
‐‐ Susan Orlean
I once had a crush on one of my teachers. I wrote him a love letter and stuck it in a bag in his office. I didn't write my name on it, but I'm sure he figured out it was me.
‐‐ Jennifer Hudson
I once had a dream and this one familiar god, who was probably one of my master teachers, said, 'You should not worry about being on the charts. That's not important.'
‐‐ Nina Hagen
I once had a friend who did the hair for sci-fi movies, and after a particularly bad break-up I stupidly went to her salon and told her she could do anything she liked. She dyed the bottom cherry red and the top peroxide blonde.
‐‐ Sally Phillips
I once had a large gay following, but I ducked into an alleyway and lost him.
‐‐ Emo Philips
I once had a long relationship with a lady, and wherever I went in the world, if I saw something she would look great in, a gown or gloves or a ring, I always knew what color she liked most. I knew her size, what material she appreciated most, and I spent the whole time buying gifts for her. And I loved her very much.
‐‐ Raymond Burr
I once had a lot of hatred, mainly toward my father, an alcoholic.
‐‐ Josh McDowell
I once had a rose named after me and I was very flattered. But I was not pleased to read the description in the catalogue: no good in a bed, but fine up against a wall.
‐‐ Eleanor Roosevelt
I once had a story editor ask me not to use the word 'placenta.' I wanted to say: 'Now tell me again how you got here?' Oh, right, an angel of God placed you into the bill of the stork.
‐‐ Jill McCorkle
I once had an Early Girl tomato at my friend Jay's house, and I thought that was the best thing I'd ever had. But then I visited friends in Senegal, and I ate sea urchin pulled fresh out of the sea. It tasted like the ocean.
‐‐ Alice Waters
I once had an extraordinary experience with former prime minister Ted Heath. Both of his eyes, including the whites, turned jet black, and I seemed to be looking into two black holes.
‐‐ David Icke
I once had dinner with Madonna and I wasn't nervous but within about a minute I found myself talking about underwear.
‐‐ Randy Newman
I once had money to burn. I'd fly to Barbados for the weekend. I lived in a twenty-two-room mansion and had my pick of four luxury cars.
‐‐ Peter Criss
I once had someone say to me in an interview, 'You are more ugly on the screen than in real life.'
‐‐ Maisie Williams
I once had this massacred afro in third grade. Parts were bigger than others. It was just terrible.
‐‐ Brittany Howard
I once heard two ladies going on and on about the pains of childbirth and how men don't seem to know what real pain is. I asked if either of them ever got themselves caught in a zipper.
‐‐ Emo Philips
I once hit Quentin on the head with my ball and chain.
‐‐ Chiaki Kuriyama
I once in a while cheat and have a little ice cream, and then I kind of blame myself.
‐‐ David H. Murdock
I once interviewed David Herbert Donald, the Lincoln historian, and we talked about how one deals with the secondary sources and the previous biographies. He said something which kept coming back to me as I worked on Cleopatra, which was: 'There's no further new material; there are only new questions.'
‐‐ Stacy Schiff
I once joked in a book that there are three things you can't do in life. You can't beat the phone company, you can't make a waiter see you until he is ready to see you, and you can't go home again.
‐‐ Bill Bryson
I once knew a chap who had a system of just hanging the baby on the clothes line to dry and he was greatly admired by his fellow citizens for having discovered a wonderful innovation on changing a diaper.
‐‐ Damon Runyon
I once knew a girl who didn't know where anywhere was in the world. Not a clue. I asked her if she knew where Africa was and she answered, 'Is it the orange one on a map?'
‐‐ Matt Roper
I once knew a guy that everyone called Trodon because his face looked like it had been trod on.
‐‐ Richard Flanagan
I once knew a house rather like The Land of Smiles - an old house occupied by a varied collection of young people, mainly students. However none of these people were true models for the characters in the book, though their way of life may have been.
‐‐ Margaret Mahy
I once literally had a casting director ask my agent, 'Can she play anything other than a drunk?'
‐‐ Carla Gallo
I once lived in a cottage made entirely of wood, and there was an electrical fire. We all ran outside, and no one got hurt, but the house was demolished.
‐‐ Taylor Kinney
I once looked like Norman Mailer in a picture with bad lighting.
‐‐ Danielle Steel
I once looked over the shoulder of a friend on Facebook and it looked like hieroglyphs to me. There's merit online, of course, but social media gets super freaky. Imagine if three generations from now, people online have forgotten what date or day of the week it is.
‐‐ Feist
I once loved this game. But after being traded four times, I realized that it's nothing but a business. I treat my horses better than the owners treat us. It's a shame they've destroyed my love for the game.
‐‐ Richie Allen
I once made a check of all books in my fourth-grade classroom. Of the slightly more than six hundred books, almost one quarter had been published prior to the bombing of Hiroshima; 60 percent were either ten years old or older.
‐‐ Jonathan Kozol
I once made love for an hour and fifteen minutes, but it was the night the clocks are set ahead.
‐‐ Garry Shandling
I once made myself black out by pulling G too quickly while flying an F-18. Being unconscious in a single-seat airplane is not good. Fortunately, I woke up in time. I learned how to better plug-in my anti-G suit.
‐‐ Chris Hadfield
I once made the mistake of going for a whole row of false eyelashes, which was just wrong as it gave me a sad, puppy-eyed look.
‐‐ Sienna Miller
I once met a man who was a billionaire, and I said to him: 'Are you a self-made man?' - and he turned around and said: 'No man is self-made;' and certainly, if you want to make films or get into television or even theatre, the amount of help that you need, the amount of people who need to give you a helping hand is extraordinary.
‐‐ Christian McKay
I once missed an appointment because I left my house, I locked the door. And then I thought, like anybody else, you know, 'I don't think I locked the door.' I just kept going back to the door. And I couldn't stop myself from checking and checking.
‐‐ Howie Mandel
I once owned a home on an island off the coast of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.
‐‐ Joseph Monninger
I once owned a really, really ugly pair of white leather boots. They were so bad. It was back in the '80s! It was just a really tacky fashion choice when I was in middle school, and I thought it was cool. I'm really embarrassed.
‐‐ Jordana Brewster