Quotes About Influence

I wore the number 24 in high school my freshman, sophomore year because of him. I wore Kobe Bryant basketball shoes because of Kobe Bryant. Every time I laced up my basketball shoes, I felt like I had Kobe Bryant with me. I had a little part of him - I had his jumper, his fadeaway.

Among contemporaries, I hugely admire Alice Munro, our Chekhov, Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, and John Updike, American masters all. I also believe that the voice of Gordon Lish is astoundingly original and sorrowful.

Al Jolson was my first husband. He always used to boast that he was spoiling me for any man who might come after him. I think Al sensed that it wasn't easy for me being married to an American institution... Was he right about spoiling me? I'm sorry. I couldn't possibly say. I couldn't be that indiscreet.

I was a big Jay Leno fan, so I was sorry to see him go. But my number one person that I watch, she's not late night, but in terms of the comedian genre, is Ellen DeGeneres - love her.

The 'Bachelor' producers have scripted and are responsible for certain events: the first moon landing, the end of the cold war, Astro-turf, and the Internet (sorry, Al Gore, it was us). But we are not responsible for, nor have we ever scripted, the ending of this show.

I actually felt sorry for Liverpool bands like Bunnymen and Wah!, having this immense pressure of following the Beatles. I suppose I responded to that challenge by being nothing like them. I carved my own thing.

We want to make politics sort of entertaining. If it is entertaining, people are going to be interested in it, and if they are interested in it, they might think more about it and maybe involve themselves in some way down the line.

People who make history know nothing about history. You can see that in the sort of history they make.

You're sort of programmed a certain way because of your environment. That's all you know. But we don't have that anymore because of the internet. Because of the internet we're all communicating with each other all across the board, so you're getting information from people all around the world, hitting a much more diverse slice of culture.

I sort of found King Diamond in second grade, but I didn't become a devoted Satanist until a few years later, but that was very much part of my adolescence as well.

I grew up and I was weaned on the Marx Brothers. They were sort of my all-time favorite. My parents showed me their movies when I was very young. And as I got older, I became a Charlie Chaplin fan, and I love Buster Keaton.

My dad has been playing guitar basically all his life. He's sort of who got me into rock music.

I think O. J. Simpson was a very prominent figure in the African-American community. He was sort of a manifestation of the American dream: 'If it can happen for him, it can happen for me.'

I think cricket and cinema are two big entities in the country. If you are part of either, you are sorted.

Jimmy Meng sought to be a power broker in the halls of justice. But the influence he sought to peddle was corrupt, and his power was illusory.

In the past, the U.S. was the centre of the world, where everything was happening. I think my stories have always sought to question this, maybe even criticise it.

My grandparents bowed to the Americans and sought to learn from them. My parents sought to be them.

Since Kennedy's death, the nation has not seen, in any of his successors, his cosmopolitan intellectualism or the oratorical eloquence with which he sought to lead the nation by the power of his words.

I stand on the shoulders of heroines who never sought public acclaim but served as inspirations to the generations that came after them.

Under Freud's influence, many ambitious biographers - not to mention psychologists, philosophers, and historians - have sought answers in their subject's childhood.

Nature, of course, has its share in the life of the soul and in numerous manifestations deeply influences human life. But this natural life of the soul is peripheral, mere appendix to the material phenomena of nature.

It's very hard to not give in, to sell your soul: to flatter a more experienced male person of power, a producer or director, in order to get what you want. You feel a pressure to flutter your eyelashes and flirt because you know that will work, and I think it's admirable to not do that.

To its credit, hip-hop is my favorite genre, to this day, and it's hard not to be influenced by the culture and by the movement of it and by the soul of it.

In the early days, I was everything to David. I was his creative partner, his lover, his soul mate.