Quotes About Influence

Musically, New York is a big influence on me. Walk down the street for five minutes and you'll hear homeless punk rockers, people playing Caribbean music and reggae, sacred Islamic music and Latino music, so many different types of music.

My stepmother Angela is an Italian from New York City. I based Rhoda on her and a Jewish friend named Penny Ann Green. People often said that Rhoda seemed to be Italian. That was the Angela seeping through.

In New York, appearance is a form of currency or, at the very least, a calling card. One must look wealthy in order to be recognised as a person of worth.

I know that doesn't sound very radical and webby of me to say that but I think the New York Times is important. I also think there's an occasional piece that will pop out.

When I was a kid, I'd practise Chopin on piano - and I love Chopin! He's my dawg! Then I'd go out on the stoop and blast the radio. I'm from New York, the concrete jungle. Hip-hop influenced me from day one.

On this basis, which was originally financial and goes back to George Peabody, there grew up in the twentieth century a power structure between London and New York which penetrated deeply into university life, the press, and the practice of foreign policy.

As I was coming up on the stage, there was one source that could make or break you, the New York Times. Inevitably there would be one actor singled out for a better review, or worse, than somebody else. The effect of that was cancerous, divisive.

I did not support any more New York. I lived 10 years there, and after September 11, I felt very European. I did not share the opinion of people in the street, who were deeply influenced by what they heard in the media.

There are people doing yoga in New York, dancing around; that's the power of India. You go to a nightclub somewhere in Spain and there's Amitabh Bachchan on the screen there, dancing around. That's the power of India. That's the power of Indian people.

I think if you had to choose between running a tabloid and being president of the United States, of course you'd run the tabloid, especially in New York.

I saw 'Six Degrees of Separation' because my brother was in it. It was a watershed experience. It was theatrical and scary, and New York functioned like a character. John Guare became a hero for me.

If you're big in Montreal, you're big in Quebec. If you're big in Toronto, you're big in Canada. But if you're big in New York, you're big in the rest of the world.

One of the problems with any kind of talking about the media landscape is that we've just been through an unusually stable period in which, for fifty years, English language media was centered in three cities - London, New York, and Los Angeles - around a very stable group of people working in a relatively stable set of media.

Woody Allen's movies are so much a part of me. I grew up watching them over and over and would read all his comic pieces for the New Yorker. In some ways, his influence is so much there that I can't even locate it any more.

Probably the biggest influence on my career was the late John Hersey, who, while he was at 'The New Yorker,' wrote one of the masterpieces of narrative non-fiction, 'Hiroshima.' Hersey was a teacher of mine at Yale, and a friend. He got me to see the possibility of journalism not just as a business but as an art form.

In New York, all the crews read 'The New Yorker.' In Los Angeles, they don't know from 'The New Yorker.'

In Washington, no one believes anything unless it comes from 'The New Yorker,' 'New York Times' editorial page, or 'The Washington Post.'

My parents put the New Yorker in my crib. I saw Vogue and Vanity Fair around the house before I could read.

'The New Yorker' didn't invent the magazine cartoon, but it did really establish it.

I listen to my early Gang Starr interviews, I'm like, damn I was really trying to sound like a New Yorker then.

Yorkshire is so much part of me.

When you can't make them see the light, make them feel the heat.

Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.

When you leave a beautiful place, you carry it with you wherever you go.