Quotes About Influence

The strongest influences in my life and my work are always whomever I love. Whomever I love and am with most of the time, or whomever I remember most vividly. I think that's true of everyone, don't you?

I remember vividly seeing 'Tarzan' and Fred Astaire, the Chaplin films, Fred Astaire musicals, MGM, because of my mother. She was just interested in everything and she took me to opera and ballet, and then ballet got me hooked.

My dad took me to see James Brown live, and that's so cool, cause I don't think many people my age can say they saw James Brown. I'm pretty proud of that. That's the thing about me that no one really knows. I had to have been 6 or 7, but I remember it vividly.

Not to age myself, but I remember vividly 'Schoolhouse Rock!' and entrust my grammar to it.

Of all the restaurants I visited in my childhood and adolescence, it was Michel Bras that I remembered most vividly and it was the chef himself to whom, early on in my cooking, I would make the most references. I don't mean that I tried to cook like him. Rather, that I tried to think like him.

It's interesting to help someone find their vocabulary. There would not have been a De Niro without a Scorsese.

It was mostly through pop culture, through hip-hop, through Dungeons & Dragons and comic books that I acquired much of my vocabulary.

Many parents and teachers have become irritated to the point of distraction at the way the weed-style growth of 'like' has spread through the idiom of the young. And it's true that in some cases the term has become simultaneously a crutch and a tic, driving out the rest of the vocabulary as candy expels vegetables.

In fact, it is Shakespeare who gives us the map of the mind. It is Shakespeare who invents Freudian Psychology. Freud finds ways of translating it into supposedly analytical vocabulary.

White rhythm is waltzes, marches, and the polka. In Africa, rhythm is used for a celebratory groove, but white rhythm doesn't have such an enormous vocabulary of spirits. It's basically militant.

All my life, people have made fun of the way I speak. I guess because a lot of my vocabulary is made up of things that other people say. I started making fun of them and imitating them and now that's how I speak.

The larger your audience, the smaller your vocabulary and range of referents - the fewer your means of expression. You can't rely on the luxury of intimacy.

Language is very deceiving. In certain languages, there is certain vocabulary that doesn't exist in other languages. It totally changes how people feel about things.

I feel a vocabulary in my music that is coming from popular music. Popular music is like the mother of all languages.

I don't swear much; I've taken those words out of my vocabulary, and having kids, you have to have two sets of language!

A lot of people who make films in my generation have the vocabulary of all the films they've seen before.

One of the things you look for is leadership, and it comes in different forms. There's vocal leaders, there's quiet leaders, there's leaders that lead by example.

I was a vocal presence in the dressing room as an 18-year-old at Leeds.

Hearing loss has not affected my vocal range. I can still pitch perfectly, but without the hearing aids, I don't hear the intricate high parts of the actual spectrum.

Chet Faker's a reference to the late Chet Baker. I'm a big fan of his vocal style; it's quite fragile and soft, and that was a style I wanted to take on.

You don't always have to be a leader and be as vocal as I am. I'm sure some people would love it if I didn't talk as much as I did.

I've always been very vocal about my religion. It's a big part of who I am.

I can sample Blink-182 but put an African vocal sample in there.

Toplines usually suck. I'll send a song to a band or artist whose entire body of work I love and I'll ask them to do a vocal for one of my songs and I'll get it back and I'll hate it so much. It might have to do with my possessiveness over my music.