Quotes About Influence

You needed to find a way to make your world dynamic, Greer knew. Sometimes you couldn't do it yourself. Someone had to see something in you and speak to you in a way that no one else ever had.

But it only makes visible a darkness that's already there. Maybe eating it like that…" She looked at Deenie, her voice like a pulse in Deenie's brain. "Maybe you bring the darkness inside you. Maybe Lise has it inside her now.

In this life," she said, crossing these glorious gams, shimmering in the filmy light, "you can't let your guard down. If you can control yourself, you can control everyone else.

But I would never tell anyone that," Dr Severin adds, leaning forward once more. She smiles ruefully. "You can never tell a man or he'll think, Ah! That's what driver her. And that's a way to weaken her.

You can't let your guard down. If you can control yourself, you can control everyone else.

And no sound from outside or anywhere. That must be the thing when you have money, I think. You never have to hear anything you don't want to, ever.

Two people, tightly twined, can begin to convince themselves of anything. There's reality and then there's the shared experience, which feels so much more real. Two people, needing each other, can come to believe things. Can come to believe wanting something was the same as making it happen. That it wasn't a choice, in the end, but the right thing to do, the fulfillment of some deeper calling.

Childhood is the fiery furnace in which we are melted down to essentials and that essential shaped for good. —KATHERINE ANNE PORTER

People will always try to scare you into things. Scare you away from things. Scare you into not wanting things you can't help wanting. You can't be afraid.

The Bible was written by man to serve his own ends. Like society. Like the church. We use such things to control one another, but what right do we have to do so?

The only truth was whatever you could make someone believe.

understand what part they played. Symmetry. And because I understood that, I understood that a single painting or composition or poem might change the future. Where its influence might end—if it ever did—was a mystery. I had spent lifetimes watching the effects of my choices, and so I knew that Joseph Hannigan was meant to be the very best of them. The world had put him into my hands; I could only guess at its design. But I knew he

It wasn't just her words, it was her way of putting them together, the voice that seemed to gain power with each one, so that my head had been filled with images so magically vibrant it was as if I had seen them with my own eyes. She changed the world into something fine. She made one believe.

It was all about control, in the end, and I had it.

Much is said about brilliance. Less attention is paid to those who live next to it. Spouses, children, assistants…if anyone thinks of us at all, it's generally to remark upon how lucky we are to bask in the light of genius.

But my mother-in-law didn't admit to mistakes, a nifty little trait she'd handed down to her son.

To those who've touched my life and made me who I am today, I say this: A different person could have told this story, but only the woman I am because of knowing you could have written this book.

What are your thoughts?' 'My thoughts?' I replied, before I even realized what I was saying. 'My thoughts created my world.' Mac sat up in his seat. He scrunched his curls with his hands, perplexed. 'Who said that?' I told him the truth. 'Oh, just someone I used to know,' I said, stroking the naked skin on my middle finger.

Words can be used as a bomb or balm.

I've been told my whole life that I've got all the power. But it's only now that I'm beginning to believe it. My days of selling junk food and perfume are over. If the world is going to listen to me, I better start saying things that are worth hearing.

The tales we tell ourselves about ourselves make us who we are.

Plagiarism has been around far longer than the Internet. In fact, I had a poem published in 'Seventeen' magazine when I was 15 years old. About a year later I was informed that there was a girl who used that same poem to win a statewide poetry competition in Alabama. It took months for people to put together that this had happened.

She taught me everything I know about what it means to be a good wife and mother, nourishing me with all the fruits of the spirit: joy, peace, kindness, faithfulness, and gentleness. What's happened to me since then isn't her fault. She did the best she could.

History is written by the victors, which is certainly true, but it's also written by the wealthy and the literate.