A cravat is the only item of named after Croatians. Balkan mercenaries were brought to Paris by Louis XIV. Their strange and exotic attire attracted the French bon hommes, who were wearing formal ruffs, and who immediately took to the simple and relaxed military cloth tied at the neck.
A. A. Gill
I was proud my father spoke Arabic fluently - his father sent him to learn Arabic from a sheikh - and we had Arab friends. His task of understanding the Arabs - not only politics but poetry - was very important; he took it as a vocation.
A. B. Yehoshua
I did four movies where I gained, like, fifty pounds. I had curly hair, and I had all of this facial hair. I had put on all this weight for these movies, and I did four or five of them back-to-back. Then I cut the weight and I got fit again. I cut my beard and I took away the mustache, and people were like, 'What are you doing?'
A. J. Bowen
When I took over as president, I studied the Constitution, and the more I studied it, the more I realised that it does not prevent the president of India from giving the nation a vision. So when I went and presented this vision in Parliament and in legislative assemblies; everyone welcomed it, irrespective of party affiliations.
A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
My mother's belief in spiritual healers grew stronger after our family went through a rough patch following my father's death. Sufi saint Karimullah Shah Kadri changed our lives, and all of us converted to Sufism. But it wasn't an instantaneous decision - it took us 10 years to convert. The change in religion was like washing away the past.
A. R. Rahman
Because I came out as a singer, I took the time to get an acting coach.
Aaliyah
Christine Bass was my high school music teacher. She took a program on its last legs and within a few years turned into one of the best programs in the country. Our high school dominated national choir competitions all through her 20-plus year tenure.
Aaron Lazar
My mother turned me onto St. Jude back in the days when I was wild and crazy. She took me to the shrine on Rampart Street.
Aaron Neville
Before Mint.com, I was a long-time user of 'Microsoft Money' and Intuit's 'Quicken.' Both were powerful tools, loaded with features and functionality around taxes, investment, budgeting - too feature-laden, in fact. They took hours to set up, forever to learn, and an hour a week to maintain.
Aaron Patzer
I took a whole stunt course and pretty much got certified as a stunt driver. It's ridiculous how easy it is once you understand the car and know how to do it.
Aaron Paul
Swimming took up so much of my faculties, and for so long, I was willing to give it everything.
Aaron Peirsol
The beauty of our country is that when it was founded that they took some time to lay out civil liberties in the first 10 Amendments - the Bill of Rights. I'm a firm believer in those civil liberties and the ability to have your own opinion.
Aaron Rodgers
My parents took me to see plays, starting from when I was very little. Oftentimes, I was too young to understand. I don't know what my parents were thinking - 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf' when I was eight years old, that kind of thing. So lots of times, I didn't understand what was going on, but I just loved the sound of dialogue.
Aaron Sorkin
When I was starting out, William Goldman took me under his wing, and he's still the person I show pages to.
I never wore a single fedora filming 'L.A. Noire.' It took about an hour and a half to do the hair - it was a very precise process.
Aaron Staton
'Pulp Fiction' was probably one of the first films I ever saw that really kind of took effect on me. I was about four years old - obviously wasn't supposed to be seeing that film; my sister kind of sneaked it out and we got to see it. She's older than me. That was something I always used to watch.
Aaron Taylor-Johnson
I was lucky enough, when I was younger, to have the chance to do as much as possible, and I found what I wanted to do. I did swimming, gymnastics, kickboxing and the one that took off more than the others was acting.
I love doing girly stuff with my mum or with Sophia. I took Sophia and a couple of her friends to the Hello Kitty spa. They had chocolate facials and Hello Kitty mani-pedis. I put it on my Twitter and got lots of abuse for it, but I think it's just a nice girly thing.
Abbey Clancy
They took away time, and they gave us the clock.
Abdullah Ibrahim
When I was a graduate student, I actually took a course in development economics and I thought it was the most boring thing in the world.
Abhijit Banerjee
Rubina hasn't fully explored her adventurous side yet. The main reason I fell in love with her was because she is super healthy and fit. She proved that she is a good climber when I took her along to climb Mt. Kalsubai.
When I came to Mumbai, I knew that I am an actor but I am not a working actor. To keep this actor alive, I had to feed him, I took up the casting job so that I can run my house.
I think casting is everything. You get a great cast and - certainly, as happens in 'The Hour' - so many of those performances on the page were transformed by those actors who took those parts and made it into something completely different.
Once I even took the train to Utrecht, forty miles from Amsterdam, with my yellow star, this star which I still have. Why did I go? I just wanted to visit some friends. I was a little bit crazy, a little bit insane.
Yes, sir, a patrol car came and took me down to a station where they were trying to develop films, but they hadn't got the facilities to develop colored film.
'Licensed to Ill' was like a cold, and we took so much vitamin C that we'd never get that cold again.
As a band, we always took a really long time to make records, so unfortunately, we got into that habit of, like, 'We'll work on it tomorrow.'
I used ribosomes from very, very robust bacteria under very, very active conditions and found a way - I actually took advantage of research done before me at the Weizmann, the same institute I am now - how to preserve their activity and their integrity while they crystallized.
It may be a coincidence, but from the minute I took anti-depressants, I didn't pick up a guitar or a pen for seven years.
My journey began with a single pencil. While traveling through India in 2006, I asked a boy begging on the streets, 'If you could have anything in the world, what would you want?' and he answered me with two words: 'A pencil.' Luckily, I had one in my pocket, and in the second it took me to give it to him, a defining dream was born.
As preachers of the gospel of Jesus, do not expect worldly honors: these Jesus Christ neither took to himself, nor gave to his disciples.
But this Christ or Redeemer took not upon him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham, that is, human nature, that in the nature which sinned he might make the expiation required.
Steve Corino was a guy I met before I got into Ring of Honor. I got to work with Steve, and he kind of took me under his wing and really helped me.
At the end of the nineteenth century, a fanatical craze for physical fitness swept through Britain. Millions of men and women took up gymnastics, body building, and other physical exercises. Such a thing had never happened before, and it was given a name - Physical Culture.
I tried out for my basketball team every year and I never made it. You had to buy the shoes before you knew if you were on the team because it took a few weeks for them to ship. I bought the shoes every year, never once made the team, had a ton of high school basketball shoes.
Be yourself. I had this three-week period where I wore this straw fedora. I thought it was what chicks wanted. And then it dawned on me that I was trying to be something that I wasn't, so I took the fedora off. So be yourself.
Because my home life was nuts, I didn't look to my parents for help. I looked to my teachers. They made me who I am. They took on a parental role. They're like celebrities or heroes to me.
I took a Ferrari under the 405 freeway. We took rent-a-cars through the desert. That was fun.
I was the guy who didn't get a cool little apartment. I took one for the team. I liked having the place we could make noise in, the place that could be the center of the music. I sat down and calculated it one day, and over the years, I've had something like 38 roommates.
The Heartbreakers were what you imagine being in a band would be like - best buddies and great players and guys who took it all really seriously.
I've always dabbled on guitar, but never took lessons.
I attended a post-college program in L.A. for Music Business and Production. Took several courses involving Music Production, Arrangement, and Songwriting.
I hired Tina Fey for 'SNL,' which was certainly a good match. She took off right away there.
I've never had a chance to sit down and enjoy what's happened - I've been too panicked about the next move. So I took some time out. I thought either I do this now or in 10 years' time I'll end up in the Priory.
My father wasn't perfect. He had a temper. I took some of that. He would snap, but the older he got, he started calming down. He learned about life, but the thing that he taught my whole family was that family was the most important thing and, no matter what, if a family member needs you, you go and help them out; you get there.
There was a lot of improvisation on 'Step Brothers.' I remember it being really frightening, and it took me a long time to get used to it and grow to be able to hold my own. But I remember when it was done feeling like, 'I don't know if I ever want to go back to working another way.'
'Cloverfield' and 'REC' are great examples of movies that took kind of tired genres, the monster movie and the zombie film, and by filming them in found footage, it was a new perspective. It gives you a whole new take and helps you re-experience that all over again.
I didn't leave Barcelona in the best way but I took the decision to leave and I don't regret it. There were a few problems with the club - some misunderstandings - and so I decided to leave because I wanted to develop as a player.
I took acting classes in my senior year in college and I loved it.
I am not a trained singer, but when I was offered to sing for 'LPNY,' I took it up as a challenge.
