Quotes About Influence

The locals are always going to want the traditions to stay alive. I just hope we can do something about them politicians.

While we Brits love a curry, the French get their spicy kicks from the culinary traditions bestowed by their North African population.

Growing up in the Libya of the 1970s, I remember the prevalence of local bands who were as much influenced by Arabic musical traditions as by the Rolling Stones or the Beatles. But the project of 'Arabisation' soon got to them, too, and western musical instruments were declared forbidden as 'instruments of imperialism.'

I had a blog for many years. Once you develop your readership on your blog, and you can put something out there or direct traffic or get attention - it's like a super power.

Once you become president, you don't even have to stop for red lights. And if it looks like traffic's too bad, you just take a helicopter.

I try and speak out on things that affect where I live in London, and at home in Enniskillen. For instance, I am very keen we get our bypass - the town is completely clogged with traffic and it's one of the most beautiful inland towns in Ireland.

Traffic is one of the most powerful films to come out in recent years. It blew me away.

We still have not been able to move into those positions in our country that are really directing traffic among that 1 percent, and that's where women have to break through.

When I was a teacher, I'd walk into the classroom. I stood at the board. I was the man. I directed operations. I was an intellectual and artistic and moral traffic cop, and I - and I would direct the class, most of the time.

Critics... They're like traffic cops. They say what they have to say, then leave, and another guy moves in ,and he has his say - and it's often just the opposite. The result is either critical acclaim or critical murder, and neither has any bearing on my music or direction.

If the Internet or air traffic of the financial center of the world shuts down, of course the world needs to have a say on it.

Whether you're talking about Shakespeare or, you know, if you look at Greek tragedies. I mean, every playwright, every songwriter, every artist who's ever sat down and been moved to create something, has been living in a context. A political moment that's most often reflected in their work. Even if you're, you know, kind of a nature poet.

In graduate school, I decide to write my doctoral thesis on how Italian architecture influenced English playwrights of the seventeenth century. I wonder why certain playwrights decided to set their tragedies, written in English, in Italian palaces.

The tragedy of India is that the Mahatma, who has numerous streets named after him and has had his statues put up everywhere, who's there in our school books and on our currency, who is used by everyone to hardsell his political ideology, is not emulated in India.

There's sadness to anyone that dies before their time, and specifically ones that seem to affect people in a positive way. It doesn't matter if it's Whitney Houston or a nameless, faceless person on the street. That's just as big of a tragedy for me.

Fear makes us do things we would otherwise never agree to do, and people can be emotionally manipulated into believing something during times of great stress and tragedy.

It doesn't matter how much wisdom you have. If you don't have position, you have nothing. That's the tragedy of India.

Tragedy is formed 'round ideas it does not expound, and to understand its history is, in some part, to understand those ideas and their place in the society that produced it.

John Mayall doesn't get enough credit. He's not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which is a tragedy.

Power is poison. Its effect on Presidents had always been tragic.

I look back on Joy Division very fondly indeed. I know that, of course, the band came to a tragic end, but that does not change the fact that Joy Division was a great band to be a part of.

Anyone who is willing for an instant to credit the claims of astral influence is a walking demonstration of the tragic failure of science education.

An arrow may fly through the air and leave no trace; but an ill thought leaves a trail like a serpent.

I want to leave my own legacy, make my own trail.