Quotes About Influence

Oh, how different my life would have been had I not grown up in the same house with my grandmother, how much narrower and blander! She was the reason I was a reader, and being a reader was what had made me most myself; it had given me the gifts of curiosity and sympathy, an awareness of the world as an odd and vibrant and contradictory place, and it had made me unafraid of its oddness and vibrancy and contradictions.

Oh, how different my life would have been had I not grown up in the same house with my grandmother, how much narrower and blander!

The scientists that present at TED confabs needn't affirm free-market capitalism directly… so long as the implication of their thinking have free-market "consilience"… In fact, TED has become a spectacularly influential force in part through its conciliation of science and libertarian economics, which it then sells to us as entertainment.

This meant that an object like Brillo Boxes was baptized as 'art' if accepted by museum and gallery directors and purchased by art collectors.

Mina thought to herself, watching, her momma was the kind of woman she wanted to be, wherever else she got to in her life.

Throughout the meal, Windy's voice blew over them, smooth and steady. It didn't matter what he was saying.

Griff couldn't, as Oriel could, gather men to him at a glance, seal them to him with a word. He had himself been the first gathered, the first sealed.

What kind of a world was it where in order to be on top you had to push others under — as if you were pushing heads down underwater — and hold them there until they drowned, and then you could be on top.

People may be the ruin of their own lives, but it's other people that get them started. -Mumma

A great writer creates a world of his own and his readers are proud to live in it. A lesser writer may entice them in for a moment, but soon he will watch them filing out.

Always be nice to those younger than you, because they are the ones who will be writing about you.

When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished.

I have realized that my will, no matter how intelligent I am, is only another nuisance on the face of the earth, once I start exerting it. And other people's wills are even worse.

The bitch-goddess, as she is called, of Success, roamed, snarling and protective, round the half-humble, half-defiant Michaelis' heels, and intimidated Clifford completely: for he wanted to prostitute himself to the bitchgoddess, Success also, if only she would have him.

He had become a settled effect in her spirit, a state permanently established, not continuous, but always recurring.

y entró en esa buena sociedad de gente del gobierno que no está a la cabeza, pero que son, o pudieran ser, el verdadero poder oculto de la nación: gente que sabe de qué habla, o habla como si lo supiera.

Não podia. Hoje em dia os confins do mundo ficam a menos de cinco minutos de Charing Cross. Com o telégrafo sem fios, os confins da Terra não existem. Os reis de Daomé e os lamas do Tibete escutam Londres e Nova Iorque.

they want to do the right thing. Just make sure they know you want them to do the right thing.

It's cause and effect, Vernon

The dead don't die. They look on and help.

Yes there were two great groups of dogs wrangling for the bitching-goddess: the group of the flatterers, those who offered her amusement, stories, films, plays: and the other, much less showy, much more savage breed, those who gave her meat, the real substance of money. The well-groomed showy dogs of amusement wrangled and snarled among themselves for the favors of the bitch-goddess. But it was nothing to the silent fight-to-the-death that went on among the indispensables, the bone-bringers.

Different places on the face of the earth have different vital effluence, different vibration, different chemical exhalation, different polarity with different stars: call it what you like. But the spirit of place is a great reality.

A man never is quite such an abject specimen as his wife makes him look

Give me the child of any healthy, normally intelligent man, and I will make a perfectly competent Chatterley of him. It is not who begets us, that matters, but where fate places us. Place any child among the ruling classes, and he will grow up, to his own extent, a ruler. Put kings' and dukes' children among the masses, and they'll be little plebeians, mass products. It is the overwhelming pressure of environment.