Quotes About Influence

When I first started reading poetry, all the poets I read - Edgar Allan Poe, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Greenleaf Whittier - were rhyme poets. That's what captured me.

I think when I was 12, I started reading Evelyn Waugh, and I loved Evelyn Waugh so much, and I thought: 'This is how the world really is. If I could be Evelyn Waugh, then I would be happy.'

I've met writers who wanted to be writers from the age of six, but I certainly had no feelings like that. It was only in the Philippines when I was about 15 that I started reading books by very contemporary writers of the Beatnik generation.

I love David Bohm. I started to get into speculative realism because I started reading his work.

I started reading 'The Onion' when I was 13 years old.

My aunt Maxie had a plastic guitar in her closet, and I started playing that, going nuts on it. I went to stay with my dad, and he saw how much I was into it, and I put my first guitar on layaway. It was a Kay Starter Series guitar and Gorilla amplifier.

For starters, Portland isn't a great city to live in if you're a young, African American male with a lot of money. But that's especially true if you don't have anybody to guide you.

I'm starting to see players copy what I do. I'm flattered.

I'm responsible for starting a whole new school of pretension.

Because of both hipster culture and Facebook culture, the human race is starting to resemble a school of hairy piranhas.

Because Ritchie Valens WAS the real deal. He was only starting, but in the time he spent in the business, he made big impact. I don't know if anybody could have made a bigger one.

Miles Davis was a part of my life from 1947 on. I was born in 1941 and I first heard him in 1947 on a 78 rpm. And then I followed his career, starting with his first solo album in 1951. He was an icon and inspiration and a mentor to me.

I followed someone who had very large shoes. He had very large shoes. Mr. J. R. D. Tata. He was a legend in the Indian business community. He had been at the helm of the Tata organization for 50 years. You were almost starting to think he was going to be there forever.

I have been influenced by many different artists at many different stages of my life. Starting out, it was people like Elton John, Billy Joel, Ben Folds, and Fiona Apple. As I got older I got deeper into the work of bands like the Beatles, artists like Sam Cooke, Ray Charles, Etta James, and Joni Mitchell.

I think when we were starting out, it was more about imitating our songwriting heroes. We would try to write songs like Neil Finn, or we would try to write songs like Ray Davies, or we would try to write songs like Glenn Tilbrook.

When I was growing up listening to music, it was 2004, when The Starting Line and Finch and The Used were kind of my favorite bands.

I'm the Ali of today. I'm the Marvin Gaye of today. I'm the Bob Marley of today. I'm the Martin Luther King, or all the other greats that have come before us. And a lot of people are starting to realise that now.

I'd wanted to be a writer and when I came back to New York worked as a musician too, but I found my writing starting to get more and more referential to cinema.

China is starting an English-speaking television network around the world, Russia is, Al Jazeera. And the BBC is cutting back on its many language services around the world.

There are a few things that I will hopefully be credited for as a pioneer. One is my four-mallet playing. Another one is the starting what was first called jazz rock in 1967 when I started my first band, later became jazz fusion by the 1970s.

A lot of people in television who've had successful shows claim the 'Roseanne' show as their starting place, and I'm really proud of that.

I had some great mentors as I was coming up and starting to sing so early - I've been singing since I was four.

It's because we are so flooded with American culture that we're startled when we see ourselves up there on the screen.

Developing compassion for Congress and politicians is a good way to begin practicing the new social activism if you want to make effective changes in the world. Perhaps the most startling new insight of all is that there is no other way to effectively change the world.