Quotes About Influence

In the third century after Christ the faith continued to spread.

Maybe the bar is low, but most of the strips that are 50, 60, 70 years old that are on their second or third generation of artists, the humor is pretty bland. There are others by people that were raised on 'Family Guy' or 'South Park' that are edgier. Mine's not as edgy as those, but it's edgier than 'Beetle Bailey.'

I get little kids who recognize me from 'Mary Poppins,' and it just delights me because it's our third generation.

My earliest influence was Quincy Jones. I thought 'The Wiz' soundtrack was the most amazing thing I'd ever heard. It was my first record and you had Michael Jackson, Ted Ross, Nipsey Russell and Diana Ross on it. I even took it to show and tell in third grade!

I was undeclared. I was in my third year of school. They said you have to decide upon a major, and my father was an actor. My mother was an actress. So, I thought theater might be the way to go.

Honestly, the egos and the quest and thirst for power is very prevalent in Washington.

The people who influenced me most were the people who said I would never make it. They gave me a thirst for revenge.

I used to play 'Grand Theft Auto' when I was an early teen, between eleven and thirteen.

In fact when Sweet Honey was ten years old it was too big for me to run, and I knew it, but I ran it for another thirteen years because I couldn't convince other people to really do it. And this year, I'm not running it.

When Obama took office, Republican appointees controlled ten of the thirteen circuit courts of appeals; Democratic appointees now constitute a majority in nine circuits. Because federal judges have life tenure, nearly all of Obama's judges will continue serving well after he leaves office.

When I heard Elvis and his 'Sun Sessions,' I went mad for it. I was about thirteen.

And, well of course, Count Basie, and I think all of the black bands of the late thirties and early forties, bands with real players. They had an influence on everybody, not just drummers.

For some reason, I spent my early thirties reading as much postwar Hungarian fiction as I could get my hands on.

I read Nietzsche when I was a teenager and then I went back to reading him when I was in my thirties, and his voice spoke directly to me. Nietzsche is such a superb literary artist.

I was listed in 'Time Magazine''s 'Thirty under Thirty' and have given three TED Talks, too.

I don't think any songwriter who comes up through playing clubs can really claim to have independently developed their art. All along the way so much information is coming, the writer inside the performer unconsciously reacts to all of that. By the time they get to be thirty, the writer is gone.

I can see firsthand being young and being from this generation as well that Instagram influences our minds in such a powerful way that sometimes we're not even aware of it.

Whatever comes next for this generation, that's going to be the greatest voice.

I feel like I'm a product of this generation where everybody listens to charts with diverse music.

I want to share music that we grew up with for this generation, the music my parents shared with me.

The talk-box thing that T-Pain does is something new and different for this generation because they don't know about Zapp or Teddy Riley. I think he's creative and has made the talk-box his own in the hip-hop world, but if these young ones studied their musical history, they'd know that.

I think in my case, I had no choice but to have a good sense of humor. I grew up with my dad, Danny Thomas, and George Burns and Bob Hope and Milton Berle and Sid Caesar and all those guys were at our house all the time and telling jokes and making each other laugh.

My late father Rev. James Thomas McGlowan was the inspiration behind 'Bamboozled.' My father admired Frederick Douglass' courage and his bravery in the face of adversity.

Between the time I was 16 until I was about 20, the books I read were by people like Thomas Mann, James Baldwin, Thom Gunn, Elizabeth Bishop. All gay, of course, although I swear I didn't know that at the time. Yet all of them, it turned out, had had a parent who died during their childhood. Sexuality is nothing compared to that.