One day, walking through the Bronx streets, I just realized that people were stopping me, taking pictures, and noticing me from across the street. I can't even use public transportation anymore, so I kind of stopped going places and started going straight to the studio, going home, and telling people I can't go anywhere anymore.
A Boogie wit da Hoodien
I started off throwing out 'Artist.' I made that my first mixtape. Then, I threw out 'TBA,' which means 'To Be Announced.'
When I was 13, before I got in high school, I was writing mad raps. I didn't really know if it was good or not, so for a year, I just held them. When I got in high school, I started spittin' bars.
My dad was very successful running midgets in Texas. Then, his two drivers ran into some bad luck. People started saying that Daddy had lost his touch. That it was the cars and not the drivers. I wanted to race just to prove all those people wrong.
A. J. Foyt
We didn't realize there were that many boy bands until we started touring in Europe. I don't think we were ever affected by it since a lot of the groups in Europe didn't really sing live, but we did and would perform a cappella as well.
A. J. McLean
I developed a mania for Fitzgerald - by the time I'd graduated from high school I'd read everything he'd written. I started with 'The Great Gatsby' and moved on to 'Tender Is the Night,' which just swept me away. Then I read 'This Side of Paradise,' his novel about Princeton - I literally slept with that book under my pillow for two years.
A. Scott Berg
We wanted to create an opportunity for people to share anything, on their own terms, revenue and all. Get away from the commerce side of music, which can be exciting and necessary but ultimately dilutes the creative impulse. The further and further you go down that path is sometimes the further you are from the reason why you started making music.
Aaron Dessner
Pittsburgh's home. This is where it all started. This is always going to be home. I always have to get back to Pittsburgh and get some work done.
Aaron Donald
When I was younger, I'd always forget stuff. I think there was probably 4-5 times where we'd drive 30 minutes to a town for the baseball tournament, and all of a sudden, I'd get to the field and look in my bag, and I didn't have my cleats. So my dad had to race all the way home to get my cleats and get back before the game started so I could play.
Aaron Judge
I've always been interested in technology, but specifically how we can use machines to engage the imagination. I started using computers when I was young and was fascinated by creating rules and instructions that allow a computer to engage in a dialogue with humans. The stories found in the data all around us can do just that.
Aaron Koblin
I started listening to gospel when I was a little boy and my grandmother used to rock me on her lap.
Aaron Neville
'Yellow Moon' was a poem. My wife at the time, Joel - she's dead now - it was our 25th anniversary. She had the chance to go on a cruise with her sister. And I'm home with the kids and looking up, and I saw the big moon, and I just started writing.
I've actually started a number of businesses in my career. So I'm 28 currently, but when I was about 16, I started building Websites, and that's how I put myself through school. I went to Duke with a degree in electrical engineering, computer science, computer engineering, and then to Princeton.
Aaron Patzer
When I was 8 or 9, I started using bulletin board systems, which was the precursor to the Internet, where you'd dial into... a shared system and shared computers. I've had an email address since the late '80s, when I was 8 or 9 years old, and then I got on the Internet in '93 when it was first starting out.
At 16, I started a web development business and had clients from the Netherlands, Caribbean, and across the country - none of whom knew my age because I could conduct all my business with a phone, scanner, and the Internet.
When I first started, I just wanted to work. I wouldn't necessarily do anything, but I'd pretty much almost do anything at the very beginning.
Aaron Paul
I started off playing rugby league as well as union. I switched between fly-half and wing, but I preferred to play fly-half. I liked to be at the heart of everything. I liked to be involved.
Aaron Ramsey
When Bale first started at Tottenham, they were struggling to win whenever he played at left-back, but it is unbelievable how quickly things can change in football.
I know a lot is going to be on our shoulders, especially the way we're starting games out. We have to start faster; I have to be sharper from the start, and I will be. And I'm confident that if we can get this thing started out a little better each week that we can get on that roll and be tough to stop.
Aaron Rodgers
I'm not from a political family and didn't grow up dreaming of being George Washington. I started working in 8th grade and have held every odd job possible - working in a gravel pit, weighing big wheelers, ticket sales, data base management - but I knew if I worked hard and got experience, I could apply that experience to my next endeavor.
Aaron Schock
But, I don't know, the violence, I can't even talk about. We don't do a lot of violent shows. When I started in television, breaking a pencil was a violent act.
I started cooking seven years ago for real, and I started with pasta, and lasagna and roast chicken. Very normal American dishes. When I turned on Food Network, or any sort of cooking channel, that's what people were making. So that's where your education comes from.
My tenure at 'The Daily Show' started during the decade after September 11, and fear of Muslims was at an all-time high. Politicians and the media seemed to dial the fright, mistrust, and animosity up to a fever pitch to gain votes and ratings.
I started getting really interested in comedy when I was in middle school.
I ended up going to college for visual arts but moved up to New York after I graduated from college in 2006 and started going gung ho to the Upright Citizens Brigade, and I realized that that was what I was really interested in and what I really wanted to do.
I definitely started to perform a little bit in middle school, but not the typical musical/play route. I think that I am funny, but it was more of a social thing, where that was my part in my circle of friends.
I didn't go to school for illustration. I did larger pieces, mostly drawings and paintings, and minored in video, but when I moved to N.Y.C., I didn't have a studio space anymore and downsized to my desk and started illustrating. I started a greeting card company and sold cards all over the city.
I left Planned Parenthood in 2009 and have since started an organization called And There Were None, which helps abortion workers leave their jobs and find new ones.
As soon as I started to realize that I could make a living playing professional soccer, I went to that place where I could torture myself because I knew it would make me better for the championship game.
It's not that I don't want to do different films. The non-mainstream stuff that I did started to get successful... But for an industry which runs essentially on money, they do put you in a box.
Franklin Delano Roosevelt eventually became the greatest liberal leader of 20th century United States, but he started as a fiscal conservative. His greatness is founded in his willingness to change his mind to save his country from the Great Depression.
I had zero connection to Bollywood or movies when I started out. I worked in theatre for eight years where luckily Makarand Deshpande mentored me, helped me to improve my body language and voice modulation.
Luckily, 'Rakta Charitra' did well in the South and I started getting a lot offers from the Tamil and Telegu film industry.
I was pleasantly surprised that south directors started creating roles for me after watching 'Rakta Charitra.'
After 'Stree', I started believing that yes, I am an actor. 'Paatal Lok' happened at the right time, when I was ready to go deep, to create something of my own and I gave it all.
I got dumped off 'The Iron Lady' a month before they started shooting, and then they brought two new writers on. Then I was brought back on again. I'm just a bit of a rubber ball. I just bounce back.
Well, my brother started acting before I did.
I really started getting more politically involved after the 2016 election, watching how partisan and how angry our political conversations became.
Whenever I visited China in the past, the relationships always felt superficial; there was no time where I felt those moments of conflict and delight that make you feel close to another person. But since I started touring there in 2004, I would always collaborate with local musicians, and that opened up a new level of intimacy.
When I first started playing the banjo and miraculously fell into a record deal in Nashville, TN, there was a period when I didn't go to China. It hurt. Like a pain in my gut... that pain you feel when you know it's time to connect with your parents or your God or your child or your past or your future... and you don't do it.
I've started working on a new album, I'm writing a new book... there are a lot of good things on the horizon.
When I was 6 years old, we were lighting firecrackers in the backyard and started a fire. My brother ran out and was pulling water from the creek and pouring it on the fire with a 7-Eleven Big Gulp cup.
I would say I started rapping because my friends were doin' it.
I've started getting acclimated to writing on the road and on the spot. I just let whatever I feel at the time come out, instead of really sitting there and taking days to write just one song.
I'm a piece of work, man. I will do what I want, at all times, always. Nobody's going to persuade me one way or another. I can't be persuaded. I take criticism, I listen, I analyze, but at the end of the day, I make the decisions. Because that's the way I started, and that's the way I'm going to finish.
'Grand Royal' started because we were on the Lollapalooza tour, and we wanted to send this message to people that the mosh pit is corny. Stop doing that. MTV has ruined it, and it's dangerous, and girls are getting hurt.
Adam Yauch started the band. It's not like a thing where we could continue without him.
When I was sixteen I started acting, and I also started to embrace my tradition and culture. I had a young medicine man interpret for me what it is to be an Indian. He really caught me at a good time because I was really vulnerable after the loss of my parents with all of the feelings of abandonment.
When I initially started acting, all I wanted to do was to be in one movie. That's it. That was my goal.
In my early 20s I was so miserable doing construction, I wanted something that paid money. I liked nice stuff. I liked cars and architecture, and things that cost money. I wanted to not swing a hammer, and make money... and not do stuff that was dirty. I attempted to get into comedy. I started to do stand-up, but I wasn't very good at it.
