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.

I began the way nearly everybody I ever heard of - I began writing poetry. And I find that to be quite usual with writers their trying their hand at poetry.

So I really began as a failed poet - although when I first wanted to be a writer I learned to write prose by reading poetry.

I gave up on new poetry myself 30 years ago when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens in a hostile world.

As they say one thing led to another and ultimately the British and Irish governments asked me to serve as chairman of the peace negotiations which ironically began six years ago this week.

The rain began again. It fell heavily easily with no meaning or intention but the fulfilment of its own nature which was to fall and fall.

But recently I began to feel that maybe I wouldn't be able to do what I want to do and need to do with American musicians who are imprisoned behind these bars music's got these bars and measures you know.

When I was a teenager I began to settle into school because I'd discovered the extracurricular activities that interested me: music and theater.

I began to feel that the drama of the truth that is in the moment and in the past is richer and more interesting than the drama of Hollywood movies. So I began looking at documentary films.

And now the momentous day a day to be forever remembered in the annals of the country arrived. Early in the morning on the 1st of July the conflict began.

As soon as I began it seemed impossible to write fast enough - I wrote faster than I would write a letter - two thousand to three thousand words in a morning and I cannot help it.