I put the copy of 'A Christmas Carol' that my grandfather had first read to me 60 years ago on my desk and I began to write. The result for better or for worse is the 'Christmas Spirits.' I plan to read it to my grandson.

The British Red Cross asked me to help them spearhead a fundraising campaign for the victims of the war in Nicaragua. It was a turning point in my life. It began my commitment to justice and human rights issues.

Today we know that World War II began not in 1939 or 1941 but in the 1920's and 1930's when those who should have known better persuaded themselves that they were not their brother's keeper.

We have been travelling through a cloud. The sky has been dark ever since the war began.

When I began writing that I was able and did travel and met some fascinating people and also uncovered some history which has not been discovered before.

The boys of my people began very young to learn the ways of men and no one taught us we just learned by doing what we saw and we were warriors at a time when boys now are like girls.

I had no idea of the character. But the moment I was dressed the clothes and the make-up made me feel the person he was. I began to know him and by the time I walked onto the stage he was fully born.

Civilization began the first time an angry person cast a word instead of a rock.

Since this war began our sympathy has gone out to all the suffering people who have been dragged into it. Further hundreds of millions have become involved since I spoke at Limerick fortnight ago.

I never really participated in specific sports or anything but once I hit 40 I started to get a little bit more active and began swimming more.

I don't remember ever deciding to become a performer. I just always was. I began performing by mimicking the performers on the new television that first took the attention away from me as the baby of the household. I continued performing to put a smile on my grandmother's face and always considered her when accepting or declining roles.

The assumption that nature is all there is and that nature has been governed by the same rules at all times and places makes it possible for natural science to be confident that it can explain such things as how life began.

The birth of science as we know it arguably began with Isaac Newton's formulation of the laws of gravitation and motion. It is no exaggeration to say that physics was reborn in the early 20th-century with the twin revolutions of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity.

Now Venus is an extremely hostile environment and as such presents a lot of challenges for a science fiction author who wants to create life there. However as I began to research it more thoroughly I found myself intrigued by the possibilities the world offers.

I began reading science fiction before I was 12 and started writing science fiction around the same time.

When I began in 1960 individuality wasn't an accepted thing to look for it was about species-specific behaviour. But animal behaviour is not hard science. There's room for intuition.

When I was in Paris all of the German refugees began to flow in and it was a very sad time.

But I now entered on my fifteenth year - a sad epoch in the life of a slave girl. My master began to whisper foul words in my ear. Young as I was I could not remain ignorant of their import.

In parallel with the development of my interests in technical gadgetry I began to acquire a profound love of and respect for the natural world which motivates my scientific thinking to this day.

Just as the process of repealing national alcohol prohibition began with individual states repealing their own prohibition laws so individual states must now take the initiative with respect to repealing marijuana prohibition laws.

I met Bill Clinton in 1977 while I was working as a news reporter for KARK-TV in Little Rock Arkansas. Shortly after we met we began a sexual relationship that lasted for twelve years.

The cinema began with a passionate physical relationship between celluloid and the artists and craftsmen and technicians who handled it manipulated it and came to know it the way a lover comes to know every inch of the body of the beloved. No matter where the cinema goes we cannot afford to lose sight of its beginnings.

I mean I went to a church school when I was younger and imbibed a certain amount of religion then but it was really in university that I got interested in religion and politics at the same time. I don't think as if it were one moment of conversion but my spiritual journey really began then.

I was in Paris at an English-language bookstore. I picked up a volume of Dickinson's poetry. I came back to my hotel read 2 000 of her poems and immediately began composing in my head. I wrote down the melodies even before I got to a piano.