Quotes About Influence

Childhood was terrifying for me. A kid has no control. You're three feet tall, flat broke, unemployed, and illiterate. Terror snaps you awake. You pay keen attention. People can just pick you up and move you and put you down.

What happens at the Fed, what Janet Yellen and the other people decide there, what happens in central banks in other parts of the world is very important. This can make the difference between a high unemployment rate, a slow recovery or a more rapid recovery.

I think that when the world feels safe and secure, we probably feel more that way in our personal lives. What goes on in the world affects us, unequivocally.

I listened to a lot of Jay-Z and Kanye coming up, which would be unexpected for a boy bander like me. But I'd listen to a lot of that, and a lot of Ed Sheeran, actually.

I used to think that the British press were particularly awful to Cherie Blair. I think Blair's foreign policy was a complete disaster, but the British press, when they wanted to explain why Blair took unexpected moves, they did create Cherie as the power behind the throne.

When you're a musician, one of the things that comes to you in the beginning that is quite unexpected is the reaction from your fans, and to the way your music plays an important part in their life in figuring things out.

My dad is never far from my thoughts. A place, a game, an incident somewhere or an unexpected word from someone can trigger a memory, which then triggers another, and suddenly I'm thinking about him, if only for a minute or two.

When I was making myself known I learnt a lot from him. I definitely regard him as the greatest, although it's difficult to say that and also unfair because there are players from different eras that have been so important and Maradona was one of them, but certainly he was an unbelievable player and I'm so glad I met him.

I see my books as a body of work, in my opinion, of singular importance and deeply disrespected in a way that is savagely unfair.

I thought it was unfair to ask school kids to integrate first. The parents should lead the way, not send out the children as advance troops.

All elections revolve around and are often resolved by who raises the most money. That's unfair. I'd like to see that process changed, but it seems once you win and get to Congress, that doesn't happen.

My mother, I suppose, is still a main figure in my life because her life was so sad and unfair, and she so brave, but also because she was determined to make me into the Sunday-school-recitation little girl I was, from the age of seven or so, fighting not to be.

One of my mother's friends said to me, 'Your ex-boyfriends didn't stand a chance with you and your mother.' And I think I probably was unfair to them because she was the first person and the last person I called about every single thing. Sorry, ex-boyfriends.

One of my rules for investing is, I don't invest in a deal where I don't think I have an unfair advantage and where I don't think I can personally impact the outcome.

Writing can be taken up at any point. But you need to remember that the arts are fundamentally unfair. Hard work and diligence won't necessarily take you all the way. Talent, nepotism, influence, and pure luck play a huge part.

I'm really excited to share cabaret, the art form, not just with the generations that are above me, but also my generation and the generation under me. I think it's an art form that's incredibly important, and I think that my generation is a little unfamiliar with it.

My entire style of playing was built around somebody else playing guitar with me, a story that, on its own, sounds unfinished.

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern: every class is unfit to govern.

I wasn't sure how it would unfold once I got to the NBA, but I knew if I got to the NBA, I could then have the platform and have the resources and the connections and the people around me that had more connections and more resources to help me really impact a lot of people's lives.

'Boy,' 'October,' 'War,' 'The Unforgettable Fire' and 'The Joshua Tree,' those records, they're part of my musical DNA and structure.

I'll never totally get away from being who I am, which first, to many, is the daughter of Nat King Cole, which became even more intensified with the 'Unforgettable' album.

I lived for 15 years in Los Angeles, and I still can't believe that the handsomest man in the world, Cary Grant, and the greatest performer in the world, Fred Astaire, and Johnny Carson, one after another - they were all in my home at different times. I celebrated my 50th birthday with them. Unforgettable.

It's unfortunate that a certain type of stripped-down classicism became the in-house architectural language for 20th-century fascism. Can an architectural language recover from such an association? Yes, I think it can, because in the end what you're talking about is a column and beam.

Politicians are there to try to deal with stuff, but sometimes it's both fortunate and unfortunate that people like us have more... not involvement, but more power in the stuff that we say.