Quotes About Influence

Even if I tried to be my dad, it would be a mediocre, slightly embarrassing version.

It is always a disappointment to turn from forthright consideration of some subject - whether from the Left or the Right, a poet or a plumber - to the Beltway version, in which the only aspects of the issue that matter are the effects it will have on the fortunes of the two parties and the various men in power.

There's always going to be a separate version of you that people will create, and you have no control over it.

Possibly the fact that I was physically quite feeble, a relatively short little fellow, attracted me to that idea of a very authoritative and aggressive version of Conservative politics.

In an interview, I lose control even of what I am, for it is the interviewer who edits me, finally, into what he thinks I am, and never have I been happy with someone else's version of my life after that person has spent an entire two or three hours fathoming it.

Lo sai, quando giocavamo all'avventuriero e all'avventuriera, tu eri quello a cui capitavano avventure ed io ero quella che le faceva capitare.

Somos aquello que hacemos con lo que hicieron de nosotros.

The genius of Proust is the totality of the works of Proust

When you say a word—negative or positive—you release powerful forces. Every word you say has power. There is no such thing as a powerless word. —Marianne Williamson I

Texts are teachers.

Let others do your work for you. Use quotes, anecdotes, information from other authorities; let them carry your message across. —Vladimir Nabokov

Every contact leaves a trace.Everyhting and everyone we touch is changed in some way.But the changes,they are never what we anticipate.

Have you ever noticed that every now and then you'll overhear an amazingly clear declarative sentence when you're out in public, spoken with such force and purpose that you absolutely yearn to know what it means, because it is just so forceful and crystalline? And you want to follow along behind whoever just spoke, even though you don;t know them, just to find out what that sentence means and how it would affect the lives of the people involved?

But the rules are made by people who couldn't win without 'em.

I could have told her that I was quite convinced, and that she would be, too, if she talked to Samantha for five minutes. But when Deborah makes up her mind, it takes a written order from the police commissioner to change it, and I didn't think there was one in the works.

That was almost certainly true—but then, Joe Acosta was a rich and powerful man, and my sister was a tough and stubborn woman, and a meeting of two such people would probably go a lot smoother if at least one person present had just a tiny smidgen of tact. Deborah had never had any; she probably couldn't even spell it. And judging from his reputation, Joe Acosta was the kind of man who would buy tact if he ever needed any. So that left me. I

As I have mentioned, I am not a fan of Facebook. It seems to me like a kind of quiet and subtle virus that worms its way into every aspect of the living tissue of daily existence, until it is impossible to think about cereal without finding an ad for Raisin Bran in your in-box. I am sure the endless intrusive connections can be a great deal of fun for some people, but it really doesn't make sense for Dexter.

But like everything else in the world that sounds good, freedom is an illusion. And in this case, I had no more choice than a man strapped into Old Sparky who is told he's free to stay alive as long as he can when they throw the switch. I looked up at Roger the Pirate. His smile looked kind of mean all of a sudden. "Quit smirking," I told him. He didn't answer. I followed my sister and Chutsky into the park.

Imagine that the correct words had been chosen by those people who are in charge of our lives. A few well-though-out words and things might have been different. Unfortunately, they have chosen all the wrong words.

Words are the most important thing we have. A few words, one word, can change history.

James M. Cain (1892–1977) wrote two indisputable masterpieces, The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity.

The seat of power in the twenty-first century is information, not oil or geography.

Korea, right, you'd think it was tea, tea, tea. Like China and Japan. But the last emperor of Korea, his name was Sunjong, the nineteen twenties, he loved the West and always had coffee at the palace. He and his father would sit around drinking coffee and talking about world affairs. Word got around and the citizens began to drink coffee. They liked to do what their emperor does. There're more coffee drinkers in Korea than any other Asian country. They even

Northern Virginia could never decide whether it was a suburb of New York or a part of the Confederacy.