I lived on the Greek side of Cypress, and I think that's also where my interest in politics really started to come alive. It was the first time that I was told I couldn't go somewhere: My grandfather's house is on the Turkish side, but we were not al...
In fact when I first got my Apple II the first thing I did was turn it on and off, on and off, just because I had the power to do so, which I'd never had on a computer before.
The shock of photographed atrocities wears off with repeated viewings, just as the surprise and bemusement felt the first time one sees a pornographic movie wear off after one sees a few more.
I first became interested in style when I was 16 and I had my first couple of gigs. I realised I couldn't look like the people I was performing to. Not in a condescending way, but just that it would be weird if I was wearing exactly what someone in t...
The stakes are high on every film now because there's the opening weekend. The first week is extremely crucial; increasingly, films are being judged in terms of opening day, opening weekend, then first week. People are going berserk promoting their f...
Being the first black Nobel laureate, and the first African, the African world considered me personal property. I lost the remaining shreds of my anonymity, even to walk a few yards in London, Paris or Frankfurt without being stopped.
If someone has failed, that is not a deficiency for me. I think that he has more motivation. I've seen many examples where someone was successful first and failed later and failed first and then succeeded. If they failed in an honest way, I don't see...
For my first three books the setting (or place if you will) has always been a given - N.J. and the Dominican Republic and some N.Y.C. - so from one perspective you could say that the place in my work always comes first.
What can I say about the First World War, a war in which I served as an infantryman, a war I hated at the start and to which I never warmed as it proceeded?
On the whole, we're a murderous race. According to Genesis, it took as few as four people to make the planet too crowded to stand, and the first murder was a fratricide. Genesis says that in a fit of jealous rage, the very first child born to mortal ...
Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision. Their goals differed, but they all had this in common: that the step was first, the road new, the vision unborrowed, and the response...
No matter what the world claims, its wisdom always growing, so it’s said, some things don’t alter with time: the first kiss is a good example, and the flighty sweetness of rhyme. No matter what the world preaches spring unfolds in its appointed t...
It was the first time I had ever seen someone die, and it wasn't what I expected...I stood there waiting for something momentous to happen, for someone to say something profound, but there was nothing...I still had the childish notion that since my l...
If you take a book with you on a journey," Mo had said when he put the first one in her box, "an odd thing happens: The book begins collecting your memories. And forever after you have only to open that book to be back where you first read it. It wil...
When art is made new, we are made new with it. We have a sense of solidarity with our own time, and of psychic energies shared and redoubled, which is just about the most satisfying thing that life has to offer. 'If that is possible,' we say to ourse...
Opportunity to suspend disbelief is often why we watch movies. The stories and images touch us and shift perspectives in ways we may not allow in our daily lives. As readily as you check your “this isn’t real” attitude at the ticket counter –...
And you will spend the rest of your life wondering if I have disciples to avenge me. Hire your tasters, Burbesh. Until the Master of the Sleeps comes for you, you’ll never know a taste of anything that has not touched another’s lips first. You’...
Jack Brennan: Well, in boxing, you know, there's always that first moment, and you see it in the challenger's face. It's that moment that he feels the impact from the champ's first jab. It's kind of a sickening moment, when he realizes that all those...
Damiel: First, I'll have a bath. Then I'll be shaved by a Turkish barber who will massage me down to the fingertips. Then I'll buy a newspaper and read it from headlines to horoscope. On the first day, I'll be waited upon... For requests, ask the nei...
First J.M. Inc. Customer: Now when you say that I can be somebody else, whaddya mean exactly? Craig Schwartz: Well, we mean exactly that. We can put you inside someone else's body, for fifteen minutes. First J.M. Inc. Customer: Can I be anybody that ...
Education is a choice. We don't become educated by watching television, and we don't learn a whole lot having similar conversations with the same, safe people day after day. Our education comes from pushing up against boundaries, from taking risks th...