When I was a child I used to read books by Gerald Durrell who founded Jersey Zoo. He had a job collecting animals for zoos and for a long time that is what I wanted to do. Later when I was a teenager I had a fantastic English teacher called Mrs. Stafford. Her enthusiasm made me decide to be a writer.
Ever since Israel has been a nation the United States has provided the leadership. Every president down to the ages has done this in a fairly balanced way including George Bush senior Gerald Ford and others including myself and Bill Clinton.
I also met early on Ella Fitzgerald. Her songbooks are some of the most amazing bodies of work.
For me science is already fantastical enough. Unlocking the secrets of nature with fundamental physics or cosmology or astrobiology leads you into a wonderland compared with which beliefs in things like alien abductions pale into insignificance.