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.

I half knew what to expect when I saw the cricket ground in the morning. It was when I started to talk to people working out there I began to find what I was looking for.

After he was assassinated his family and the men who had served him continued the lying and began the destruction censoring and hiding of JFK's medical records.

In my second year after moving to the Medical School I began the courses of Anatomy and Physiology. I had begun to see that I was interested in cells and their functions.

When the first fossils began to be found in eastern Africa in the late 1950s I thought what a wonderful marriage this was biology and anthropology. I was around 16 years old when I made this particular choice of academic pursuit.

The first thing which I can record concerning myself is that I was born. These are wonderful words. This life to which neither time nor eternity can bring diminution - this everlasting living soul began. My mind loses itself in these depths.

Life began with waking up and loving my mother's face.

I think that the proposed constitution is one of the European legal documents with the strongest social dimension I have seen since I began following European issues.

It wasn't until I went to college that I met the theatre people and began to admire them because they were learning a trade that was guaranteed to make money!

I began learning the sportswriting business very early in life.

After learning the language and culture of the Chinese people these Jesuits began to establish contacts with the young intellectuals of the country.

World War II had been such a tremendous success story for this country that the political and military leadership began to assume that they would prevail simply because of who they were. We were like the British at the turn of the 19th century.

It is true that the aristocracies seem to have abused their monopoly of legal knowledge and at all events their exclusive possession of the law was a formidable impediment to the success of those popular movements which began to be universal in the western world.

I began the study of medicine impelled by a desire for knowledge of facts and of man. The resolution to do disciplined work tied me to both laboratory and clinic for a long time to come.

Over the course of two years we arrived at a point where we began to look at the value added by making information more easily accessible across the intelligence community both defense and national.