Quotes About Influence

I definitely listened to country music. I don't think I listened to hair bands as much as I did Bruce Springsteen and U2 and Aerosmith.

I enjoy his concerts and OK, maybe - I can't sing, I can't dance, I can't play the guitar, but I am going to go a long way if I keep following Springsteen.

I learned a lot from Bruce Springsteen and David Chase.

My mom is an elementary school music teacher, a pianist, and a singer, and my dad plays guitar - he's a huge Bruce Springsteen fan. My mom does musical theater, too. All of those influences were around.

Following the example of Bruce Springsteen or Bob Seger, I wanted to have a band, a sound and a personality, yet maintain a singular position of being able to control and motivate the flow of things.

I would say, from an all-around point of view, Bruce Springsteen is one of the two great poet lords of America, Bob Dylan, coming out of the music world, the two of them.

Both Springsteen and Michael Jackson, who had these huge productions, could always scale them back down to just a song and a melody. All of that influences me. I also try to be a fictional writer, and sometimes I get close, but the things that resonate the most with me - and with everyone else - is what's real.

As a songwriter, I listen to everything to be inspired... from Rihanna to Bruno Mars to Springsteen to Johnny Cash.

My life changed because Bruce Springsteen got on a mic in front of me.

I haven't really met anyone else who has influenced me, but you never know, it could happen next year or next month. I just like to go with the spur of the moment.

As you get older, you get less people to hold you accountable, especially in pro sports. The players have all the power. Unless you play for the Spurs. Then you're a college kid for life.

I probably read Harriet the Spy about 70,000 times.

I think I was 13 years old when my father put in my hands 'The Spy Who Came in from the Cold.' It was the first real adult book I ever read, and it opened a new world.

I love the Zucker brothers' films - 'Airplane!,' 'Top Secret' and 'Police Squad!' - are my formative experiences.

In the case of 'Goon Squad,' which sold slowly for a long time despite the good reviews, those 'best of 2010' lists were pivotal, and made the book really sell.

Mascherano's impact as a leader is more important inside the squad, and Messi's leadership is more important in the pitch.

My listening changed when I heard music from Stax, Atlantic, Motown because by that age I thought anything that my parents listened to must be square. So I had to find my own rock n' roll, as it were, and I found it in black soul music.

I saw my father preach in Madison Square Garden, and I was a little embarrassed, I think, the first time I heard him preach. That's my father up there, and I kind of slid down in my chair.

New York City has more rock history in its 305 square miles than most of America combined.

Ordinary people in such positions - working at firms, companies, or chains - have the absolute right to have their voice in the public square.

I like to think that I offer more woman per square inch.

I want to squeeze every drop out of my potential as far as affecting the world around me.

You're an enormous sponge and everything goes in there and you squeeze it out in songs, I guess. And if you're a painter, you squeeze them out on to a canvas.

The James Brown story is not about James Brown. It's about who's getting paid, whose interest is involved, who can squeeze the estate and black history for more.