When I first came to New York City in 1967, I joined up with Richard Schechner's Performance Group - where we worked in the Performing Garage in SoHo.
‐‐ Spalding Gray
When I first came to New York City, what I was thrilled about was not the Empire State Building, or the Statue of Liberty; it was the fireplugs in the street. These things that Jack Kirby had drawn. Or these cylindrical water towers on top of buildings that Steve Ditko's 'Spider-Man' fights used to happen in and around.
‐‐ Dave Gibbons
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.
‐‐ Madonna Ciccone
When I first came to New York, I was so bored. My friends were like, 'Do a blog. It's the hip thing to do for male models.'
‐‐ River Viiperi
When I first came to New York, I would scream like a girl and run to the other side of the street if there was a pigeon. Now I can face off with a pigeon.
‐‐ John Searles
When I first came to Oxford, I struggled to feel comfortable in an Anglican, public school-dominated institution.
‐‐ Niall Ferguson
When I first came to the Bay area, I worked in Silicon Valley in the early to mid-'90s, and I think what mattered then was our ability as designers to create a vision around people's ideas.
‐‐ Yves Behar
When I first came to the House of Commons and walked out into the lobby, men sprang to their feet. I asked them to sit down since I'd come to walk around. I didn't want them doing me favours.
‐‐ Agnes Macphail
When I first came to the States, I thought I had a perfect American accent, and then I was abruptly becoming aware that it wasn't. So I did have to work on it a little bit, but I was hesitant working on it because I thought it was good.
‐‐ Joel Kinnaman
When I first came to the United States in 1956 I fell in love with things - mainly the vitality and the freedoms.
‐‐ Harold Evans
When I first came to Washington, what I admired most was that people were just really, really smart with a tremendous amount of intellectual horsepower and the ability to look at an issue and say something fresh.
‐‐ Ezra Klein
When I first came up, the bullpen was pretty much where they put the guys who couldn't start.
‐‐ Dennis Eckersley
When I first concluded to print the book, I made an honest effort to construct it in the third person.
‐‐ John Sergeant Wise
When I first decided I wanted to make beats and write songs and stuff like that, it wasn't like I sat down and the first thing I wrote was even halfway legit. It took a while to find my way through it.
‐‐ G-Eazy
When I first decided I was going to have a go at writing a book - and really, it was a mid-life crisis - I was 39. I was in business with my husband; we had a very busy lifestyle and quite a hectic schedule running this flourishing business in travel, and I found myself waking up and realising that I didn't want to do this anymore.
‐‐ Fiona McIntosh
When I first decided to launch a clothing line, I was pregnant with my daughter Spencer-Margaret, so I looked for a retailer with values that mirrored my own growing family concerns. Kmart is a family store where value-conscious moms shop, so my partnership with Kmart seemed like a natural fit.
‐‐ Jaclyn Smith
When I first decided to open a restaurant, I was turned down by several banks. It was the late 80's and many restaurants were failing. I refused to give up because I knew I had a good concept.
‐‐ Emeril Lagasse
When I first did a U.S. pilot season, there were very few British actors schlepping around town trying to get into television. That was 1999.
‐‐ Jamie Bamber
When I first did 'Best in Show,' I had never done any improvisation.
‐‐ Jim Piddock
When I first did 'Moby,' I didn't realize how taxing it would be. I was climbing fifty feet up in the air and climbing down. Literally, it's so busy, you feel you're on a ship. You're always moving; you're constantly adding clothes or taking them off, and there are many people on stage all the time!
‐‐ Stephen Costello
When I first did 'The Fast and the Furious', I didn't want there to be a sequel on the first one. I thought, 'Why would you rush to do a sequel - just because your first film is successful?'
‐‐ Vin Diesel
When I first did 'The Lord of the Rings,' I was acting on the set with the other actors, but then I had to go back and repeat the process on my own to do the physical capture on a motion capture stage.
‐‐ Andy Serkis
When I first did theatre, I was always doing comedies; it was always my first love. But it wasn't what I was picked for at first, for films and TV.
‐‐ Olivia Wilde
When I first discovered for myself the Celtic Twilight and read the earlier poems of Yeats and others, all was entirely incomprehensible to me. I groped through a mist of blurred meanings, stumbled through lines in which every accent seemed to be in the wrong place.
‐‐ Austin Clarke
When I first discovered in the early 1980s the Italian espresso bars in my trip to Italy, the vision was to re-create that for America - a third place that had not existed before. Starbucks re-created that in America in our own image; a place to go other than home or work. We also created an industry that did not exist: specialty coffee.
‐‐ Howard Schultz
When I first drew him I had eyes in there and it didn't look right.
‐‐ Bob Kane
When I first dropped into L.A., I wanted to be a superhero!
‐‐ Derek Theler
When I first drove my car down Sunset Strip, I nearly crashed my car gazing at the monolithic ads of various celebrities. They are bigger than King Kong, and more frightening.
‐‐ Rebecca Pidgeon
When I first encountered the name of the city of Stockholm, I little thought that I would ever visit it, never mind end up being welcomed to it as a guest of the Swedish Academy and the Nobel Foundation.
‐‐ Seamus Heaney
When I first encountered the 'Sigma Force' novels - long before I became friends with Jim Rollins - a bookseller told me that these stories were about 'geeks with guns.' While not entirely accurate, that's pretty close to the mark, and that really speaks to me.
‐‐ Jonathan Maberry
When I first envisioned 'Funny Games' in the mid-1990s, it was my intention to have an American audience watch the movie. It is a reaction to a certain American cinema, its violence, its naivety, the way American cinema toys with human beings. In many American films, violence is made consumable.
‐‐ Michael Haneke
When I first filmed things, they were always slightly awkward.
‐‐ Ralph Fiennes
When I first finished 'Sharpe,' it was hard to get work because people only saw me as him.
‐‐ Sean Bean
When I first found out I had diabetes I denied it.
‐‐ Nell Carter
When I first found out I had HIV, I had to find somebody who was living with it, who could help me understand my journey and what I was going to have to deal with day-to-day. I found out that a person named Elizabeth Frazier was living with AIDS at the time, and so I called her up, and she took a meeting with me.
‐‐ Magic Johnson
When I first found out that I was an Idol finalist, I cried tears of happiness. I was just so happy, and my family was there and the fact that got to see that moment and share that moment with me was just everything to me.
‐‐ Pia Toscano
When I first found out that Superman wasn't real, I was about maybe eight. And I was talking to my mother about it. And she was like, 'No, no, no. There's no Superman.' And I started crying. I really thought he was coming to rescue us. The chaos, the violence, the danger. No hero was coming.
‐‐ Geoffrey Canada
When I first got a guitar, it was a Spanish, classical thing.
‐‐ Roger Waters
When I first got asked to run for the state Senate, I was asked by a number of legislators I had worked with, and I thanked them and declined.
‐‐ Maggie Hassan
When I first got back from the war, I said, 'I'm gonna write the Great American Novel about the Vietnam War.' So I sat down and wrote 1,700 pages of sheer psychotherapy drivel. It was first person, and there would be pages about wet socks and cold feet.
‐‐ Karl Marlantes
When I first got here, every time you'd say breast feeding on the House floor there would be a snicker. This has been happening since creation. Can we finally get a grip on it?
‐‐ Susan Molinari
When I first got into business, I made a lot of bad decisions.
‐‐ Daymond John
When I first got into making makeup, I didn't necessarily want to start a company. I just wanted to make a lipstick that looked like lips, only better.
‐‐ Bobbi Brown
When I first got into technology I didn't really understand what open source was. Once I started writing software, I realized how important this would be.
‐‐ Matt Mullenweg
When I first got into the league, I tried to fit in. Now I don't care.
‐‐ Dwyane Wade
When I first got into the music scene, I was inspired by different songwriters. I like to dress from the '50s and '60s. I like to paint a picture of that era through my music and clothes. I am inspired by a whole a lot of things, from doo-wop to gospel and soul music.
‐‐ Leon Bridges
When I first got into the rap game, I had an early dream of unifying rappers.
‐‐ Ice T
When I first got into wrestling as a kid, I would read all of the wrestling magazines I could get my hands on. There was a satisfaction discovering that there was a whole wrestling world that existed that you didn't see on TV on Saturday morning. There was this idea that there was this stuff going on there that they didn't want us to see.
‐‐ Box Brown
When I first got married to my husband, he had boxes full of photos of my two stepsons, ages 5 and 8 at the time, and I put them together in some little albums and wrote notes about how happy I was that they were a part of my life.
‐‐ Nancy O'Dell
When I first got my driver's license, I was hit by a drunk driver. He was coming off of a freeway, and I was hurt pretty badly from somebody driving really fast.
‐‐ Amy Heckerling
When I first got my record deal, I was like, 'I just want to sing,' and I never put much thought into what really goes into a record. But as I got older, I developed a passion for writing.
‐‐ Hilary Duff