I got interested in the idea of music that could make itself in a sense in the mid 1960s really when I first heard composers like Terry Riley and when I first started playing with tape recorders.

First of all the music that people call Latin or Spanish is really African. So Black people need to get the credit for that.

I think I first realized I wanted to be in country music and be an artist when I was 10. And I started dragging my parents to festivals and fairs and karaoke contests and I did that for about a year before I came to Nashville for the first time. I was 11 and I had this demo CD of me singing Dixie Chicks and Leanne Rimes songs.

Stone walls confine a tinker cold iron binds a witch but a musician's music can never be fettered for it lives first in her heart and mind.

What's that line from TS Eliot? To arrive at the place where you started but to know it for the first time. I'm able to write about a breakup from a different place. Same brokenness. Same rock-bottom. But a little more informed now I'm older. Thank God for growing up.

I remember when first Stripes and then Animal House came out - which I was really proud of even though it was kind of loose and quite raucous - there were imitative movies that were not quite as good.

I think movies do play a valuable role in turning people on to the act of reading. I think that phenomenon just creates readers. At first they're going to love 'Harry Potter ' or they may love 'The Hunger Games ' but after that they're going to love the act of reading and wonder 'What else can I read?'

I wanted to keep exploring... I'm not about to choose a series of movies in which I can use the same bag of tricks and style that I used in the first film.

I love the first two X-Men movies because I thought that Bryan Singer did such a great job. He elevated that whole genre. He's a very talented director.

The first two movies I directed failed when I was 21 and 23 and that was the greatest thing that could have happened.

I grew up on the crime stuff. Spillane Chandler Jim Thompson and noir movies like Fuller Orson Welles Fritz Lang. When I first showed up in New York to write comics back in the late 1970s I came with a bunch of crime stories but everybody just wanted men in tights.

Bill Hanna and I owe an awful lot to television but we both got our start and built the first phase of our partnership in the movies.

I grew up watching those blaxploitation movies. Ron O'Neal Richard Roundtree Jim Brown Pam Grier. For the first time I saw 'The Negro' get one over on 'The Man.'

I was in television drama which is a first cousin to the movies and I trust myself to make the right decisions.

All through my life what I've loved doing is watching movies. I love the escapism of film I love stories. So it is incredible to be able to be in them as much as I am to see them from the first stitch in a costume to the end product.

I appreciate a slow-burn romance. In most movies everyone is just tearing their clothes off in the first scene.

I took acting classes in college and once I graduated I decided to give acting a shot when I couldn't really think of anything else to do. It took me a couple of years to get an agent and my first big break was The Fanelli Boys which was a sitcom on NBC. Then I did a few television movies.

I grew up when I was 15 when I had my first opportunity in movies. I watched every great movie for a year and a half and since then I've asked myself how I can emulate such artistry. That's really my motivation. I want to do something as good as my heroes have done.

I'm the first to admit that I like going to or my memories at least of going to Clint Eastwood movies or Charles Bronson or James Bond.

The next thing I knew I was out of the service and making movies again. My first picture was called GI Blues. I thought I was still in the army.

To me movies and music go hand in hand. When I'm writing a script one of the first things I do is find the music I'm going to play for the opening sequence.

The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself.

Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.

In order to succeed we must first believe that we can.