Quotes About Influence

Yo La Tengo were a major inspiration for me because they're one of the first bands that I got into on my own, separate from my parents, when I was in high school. I have all their albums. That's the place we'd like be in someday.

I only knew that I didn't like the AAU culture. I knew that if I had a chance someday, that I would love to be able to, even if it was a small drop in a bucket, to be able to change the culture and be a part of a positive change.

Culture is a little like dropping an Alka-Seltzer into a glass - you don't see it, but somehow it does something.

We didn't sell a lot of records, but somehow we left an impression.

When people ask me what it is about Brazil and my work, it's not something that I can say literally. It's unidentifiable. It's like when you do research and things inspire you. If you're smart enough, then obviously you don't take it literally. The inspiration will come out later somehow.

I chose to go to law school because I thought that someday, somehow I'd make a difference.

'Catholic writer' seems like you have an agenda of evangelization, as if you were somehow influenced in your choice of perspective by dogma or canon law. That has nothing to do with me. I don't have a lot in common with other 'Catholic' writers.

I hope, when I stop, people will think that somehow I mattered.

My father made with me one serious mistake which I see parents about me making. He got himself somehow into the awkward position of an authority; I thought he knew and was right on everything - for a while.

It's interesting because neither of my parents play instruments. They both love music, but neither of them are musicians. Somehow, I was drawn to it.

When I began I thought that literature was contained within a bubble that somehow floated above the world commented upon by newspapers. But I became more and more interested in trying to include some of that world within my work.

People really think that the only way I got to be press secretary is because I somehow had a personal family connection to the Bushes or the Cheneys, and that wasn't true.

There has been talk in Europe about American hegemony being somehow based upon the use of the dollar in the world. I just don't see that connection at all.

There are people out there who will not read books, but somehow they'll read my books.

When we look at history, we see history is made up of the heroes of their times. Yet, somehow we miss this when we put on the lens of the Scriptures.

I base my roots and history in old blues, old country and old bluegrass, and I like rock 'n' roll, and somehow it all came together, and that is what I am playing now.

I've always felt writing a song was a bit like going on location. That's true in an almost literal sense. Where you are seeps in somehow.

With cyberbullying, one press of a finger on an electronic device can shatter someone's reputation and what they think is their entire life. It's scary.

All art is political in the sense that it serves someone's politics.

The environment around you shapes who you are. How you handle an emergency or how you react when someone is rude to you, that's you.

Someone had to change the world. And obviously I was the one for the job.

I think the greatest way to learn is to learn by someone's example.

There's a time to impress someone, and then there's a time to make an impression on someone.

If I have affected someone in a positive way, that means a lot to me.