Quotes About Influence

I think it's important to remember where I began. I know that when I talk to other writers, say, writers from the South or writers from abroad, it's where they begin as children that is important to them.

Politics is too big a game to feel the absence of a Kamal Haasan.

There's never been an era absent of demagogues.

People have asked me, 'Do you consider yourself a trailblazer?' Absolutely not. And the reason I say this is, I am aware of the women who came before me.

I wouldn't listen to my parents, but I found out that I absorbed. I never heard what they said - told me - but I did what they did.

The impact of Luis Enrique has been very positive. He has very clear ideas about football and we've absorbed them.

The pop industry is so well-practised at channelling young people's creative energy that I think it gets abused.

My mother was a very good violinist; my father was a musicologist and spent most of his life in academia.

I think my mom always wanted to play the guitar, and somehow she projected that to me. So I started learning to play guitar when I was five years old, but actually I'd never managed to get the academic side of it. So even up to today, I don't know how to read or write music.

My parents were bookish, very musical, but otherwise uninvolved in the arts or the academic world.

My mother has lived abroad and I've grown up hearing her talk, so probably that's where I get this accent from.

When I was very little, I had an Essex accent.

I'm obsessed with accents.

I feel for a film to be accepted, women have to take to it. The women bring the rest of the family to the theatres.

Most people, I think, have accepted that it's not up to them to control other people's choices, except, it seems, when it comes to Washington, D.C., where everyone has an opinion about people's uteruses.

There's so much information accessible to everyone now because the Internet is so powerful; social media is so powerful.

Since I became accidentally famous, it did give me access and, through that access, power that I couldn't just walk away from.

Things are done according to money these days.

My very first account was @BlackBarbie, which is what my friends called me growing up. Then I thought, 'You can either call yourself that, or you can find something that will matter to dark-skinned girls.' So I came up with @melaniin.goddess.

I'm big into my Twitter account.

The better-informed we are, the more we can do to make sure what's happening is in our interests and is accountable to us.

This career affords me the opportunity to accumulate money, power and respect.

The 'spirit of Davos' has definitely achieved a thing or two.

If I've achieved a higher respect for women and for their role in society, then I would be very happy. That would really be my greatest wish.