Quotes About Influence

Fantasy has had some problems with being too repetitive, in my opinion. I try to read what other people are doing - and say, 'How can I add to this rather than just recycle it? How can I stand on Tolkien's shoulders rather than stand tied to his kneecaps?'

Just think about it: in every shop in the reading world since 1956, there has been two feet of book-space devoted to Tolkien.

I'm a huge fan of Tolkien. I read those books when I was in junior high school and high school, and they had a profound effect on me. I'd read other fantasy before, but none of them that I loved like Tolkien.

Authors as diverse as Rudyard Kipling, E. Nesbit, and J. R. R. Tolkien have shaped modern paganism as greatly as any theological underpinnings.

Tolkien was influenced by South Africa when he was writing 'Lord of the Rings.' It's really epic scenery.

Every story takes its toll on me and leaves an impression on me.

I'm most impressed by the Russian writers, so I love reading the works of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. Another author who has informed the way I think is the French philosopher, Blaise Pascal.

I've gained a lot from James Joyce, Tolstoy, Chekhov and R. K. Narayan. While writing, I try to see if the story is going to radiate spokes. Their literature has always done that and gifted me beautiful things.

One of the greatest things about writing as a profession is that the words of Tolstoy, Chesterton and Dostoyevsky have lived for a hundred years and are just as powerful today. Their words have changed me just as much as the people I actually met.

I've read probably 25 or 30 books by Balzac, all of Tolstoy - the novels and letters - and all of Dickens. I learned my craft from these guys.

I am a writer. I am rooted in Tolstoy, I am rooted in Homer, I am rooted in Cervantes.

Bill Burr, Freddy Soto, Joe Rogan, Tom Segura... those people influenced me a lot more than any of the older guys like Richard Pryor.

I was the muse of Tom Ford and Gucci for years, but that was a long time ago.

I had a brother six years older than me, so I wasn't just listening to teenybopper stuff. My brother had the cooler music, but my parents had the Burt Bacharach, Tom Jones, the Association, the Fifth Dimension; these groups were un-cool, but I secretly loved them.

Tom Browkaw said it best. He said NBC could survive without him or the rest of the news division, but not Nancy Fields.

I don't think Tom Hardy has an actual voice of his own. Except maybe the one in 'The Dark Knight Rises,' as Bane.

Wars, plagues, names upon tombs tell us only what happened. But history lies in the cracks in between. In the inexplicable, invisible turns and decisions. A person saying no instead of yes. …It is not that they had lived…but how.

If there are places that hold us, keeping us in them, surely too there are people, he felt, people who work like mirrors for the selves we have forgotten.

Leadership matters. Different leadership pushed the United Kingdom and the United States in a different direction. It might have nurtured egalitarian tendencies in Germany, too.

Every kleptocratic network I have examined, from Afghanistan to Honduras to Central Asian or African countries, has included a skein of outright

Curtailed, too, were hopes for a similarly democratic economy, based to any significant degree in joint local action in the interests of participating citizens. And yet, even in "failure," these movements profoundly altered the American system—at least for a time.

The five chairs of the power committees," for example, "must contribute $500,000 [each] and raise an additional $1 million" for congressional campaign funds. Big donors thus get to choose not just who runs for office, but who, once elected, leads.

A Nigerian once answered a question about the social significance of money with an enigma: "People use money to intimidate people," he stated. I knew what he meant, but I made polite conversation: "Really? How?" "By giving it to them." That was not the answer I expected. I waited. "Then they can tell them what to do." Afghans said the same, I remembered: "When someone eats your food, he should obey you. You don't obey him.

But leading lights of the Democratic Party and the businesses affiliated with them quickly embraced the new plutocratic ethos.