When I was eight years old I got a dummy for Christmas and started teaching myself. I got books and records and sat in front of the bathroom mirror practising. I did my first show in the third grade and just kept going there was no reason to quit.

In the spring of 1994 I decided not to seek reelection to the Senate. I had made the decision 12 years earlier Christmas Day of 1982 just after I had been first elected to a full term that I would do the best I could for a limited time.

A friend gave me a CD of the 'Pathetique' Symphony as a Christmas present. I went home and I put on the CD expecting to listen to Tchaikovsky. But it started 'ta ta ta taaa.' It was too long for me. I didn't understand it at first but then I fell in love in love in love.

First of all I've been having a wonderful run of luck with cover albums songs I didn't write. I had five pop cover albums and two Christmas albums and they were all very successful.

I think we felt the pressure more at first than this time around. But still you don't want to let anyone down. I never even met Patrick until we had a Christmas party at Ian McKellen's house on the first movie and then I didn't see him again until the premiere.

If you pray enough for things I am proof that they can happen. I feel like a kid on Christmas day now every day. It's something I have wanted for a long time and I am as happy as anyone to be here. It is great to be back at my first love.

There's a little vanity chair that Charlie gave me the first Christmas we knew each other. I'll not be parting with that nor our bed - the four-poster - I'll be needing that to die in.

Now the essence the very spirit of Christmas is that we first make believe a thing is so and lo it presently turns out to be so.

Close your bodily eye that you may see your picture first with the eye of the spirit. Then bring to light what you have seen in the darkness that its effect may work back from without to within.

When you're a chef you graze. You never get a chance to sit down and eat. They don't actually sit down and eat before you cook. So when I finish work the first thing I'll do and especially when I'm in New York I'll go for a run. And I'll run 10 or 15k on my - and I run to gain my appetite.

Racism in the first place is a weapon used by the wealthy to increase the profits they bring in by paying Black workers less for their work.

I'm the first to admit this whole salary thing is getting out of control. In the final analysis it's still about the work.

A work can become modern only if it is first postmodern. Postmodernism thus understood is not modernism at its end but in the nascent state and this state is constant.

The last thing one discovers in composing a work is what to put first.

The first lesson I've learned is that no matter what you do in your life you have to figure out your own internal rhythms - I mean what works for you doesn't necessarily work for your friend.

Work is of two kinds: first altering the position of matter at or near the earth's surface relative to other matter second telling other people to do so.

If I went to work in a factory the first thing I'd do is join a union.

My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group there was much less competition.

There are two kinds of people those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group there is less competition there.

For me every day is a new thing. I approach each project with a new insecurity almost like the first project I ever did. And I get the sweats. I go in and start working I'm not sure where I'm going. If I knew where I was going I wouldn't do it.

Every noble work is at first impossible.

You cannot escape the fact that women mould your first five years whether you like it or not. And I can't say I do like it very much.

In my ballets woman is first. Men are consorts. God made men to sing the praises of women. They are not equal to men: They are better.

People love talking about when they were young and heard Honky Tonk Women for the first time. It's quite a heavy load to carry on your shoulders the memories of so many people.