I started out as an assistant to a director on two movies, Miguel Arteta. The movies I worked on were 'Chuck and Buck' and 'The Good Girl.' I didn't even know I wanted to be a director until I started working with Miguel.

I was very driven in high school. I worked a bunch of odd jobs. I never partied. I never drank. I was just a theater geek who was obsessed with movies.

I worked with some directors, and it was really collaborative, and I was sort of writing with them. I was giving so many pieces of myself to their movies, I thought, 'It's about time I use my own voice for me, and establish my own voice.' So I knew I wanted to make films.

Because my parents, growing up, they worked hard. Everyone in my family woke up early in the morning. I used to see my mother and my father go off to work, and come back and, no matter what, they had time for the kids.

I started working a Saturday job at this French cafe from when I was about 14. I lived two minutes away from the cafe and went there every morning. One day, the manager asked if I wanted to work there. I'd never worked before, so thought I'd give it a go.

And if small businesspeople say they made it on their own, all they are saying is that nobody else worked seven days a week in their place. Nobody showed up in their place to open the door at five in the morning. Nobody did their thinking, and worrying, and sweating for them.

Being raised Muslim, we had to get up at the crack of dawn to pray. There was no sleeping in, no getting up Saturday morning to watch cartoons because there was no TV in the house. But you got up and you worked, cleaned the house.

In 1985, I was living with my sister in Virginia, and since I was still in high school, I worked at McDonald's to save money to get an abortion. It sounds really terrible, but it was the best decision I ever made. It was the first time I took responsibility for my actions. I messed up, had sex without contraception, and got pregnant at 15.

Mum obviously did not earn much money to feed me and my siblings. She worked hard to raise us, but there was always something missing.

Me personally, I'm real close to my mom. She raised me. It was a single-parent home situation. She did everything: cooked, worked two jobs, came home late, but she loved me to death.

Puffy's contribution to hip-hop culture was the remix. He offered us the music that his mom played in front of him, with newer drums and younger artists. That worked, and will consistently be there. The remix comes right after the original record, that's something Puffy did to influence the culture.

Like a lot of you, I grew up in a family on the ragged edges of the middle class. My daddy sold carpeting and ended up as a maintenance man. After he had a heart attack, my mom worked the phones at Sears so we could hang on to our house.

My mom would get up every day at 4 A.M. and worked two jobs. I always felt I was the poorest kid on the block. I had a chip on my shoulder about being broke.

My mom always told me one of the reasons that she was really happy in her life was that, if Dad never worked again, she was confident that she could support the family.

My mom worked at Walmart for 33 years straight. Thirty-three years! Day in and day out.

My mom told me to cover up my arms ever since I was little because I was muscular. She wanted me to be feminine, which did not come easy to me. My body was what it was, and I worked it to be a better tennis player.

My mom worked as a manager at a high-end fashion place, so she was always a pretty stylish woman.

My mom worked at McDonald's, and she decided she wanted to make more money, so she got into the management program at McDonald's. And that's how you move up the chain. It's not by demanding that minimum wage is raised; it's by actually acquiring the skills. That's the way that people get ahead in life.

What motivated me? My mother. My mother was an immigrant woman, a peasant woman, struggled all her life, worked in the garment center.

My mother worked in factories, worked as a domestic, worked in a restaurant, always had a second job.

For books are more than books, they are the life, the very heart and core of ages past, the reason why men worked and died, the essence and quintessence of their lives.

Before I was elected to Congress, I worked in a courtroom. For years, I defended doctors and hospitals, and for years, I sued them on behalf of people who were victims of medical malpractice.

For 30 years, which I never talked about in Hollywood, I actually worked with doctors lecturing and doing some medical intuitive counseling both in a medical setting and for the community at large.

In preparation for a career in academic medicine, I worked as a medical house officer at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital from 1966 to 1968 and then joined Ira Pastan's laboratory at the National Institutes of Health as a Clinical Associate.