Quotes About Influence

I was a huge movie watcher, but I really loved 'Kenan & Kel,' 'Rugrats,' 'Doug,' & 'Catdog.' I was also into drama films, though, and I really loved 'Poetic Justice' and 'Set it Off.'

Poetry is a call to action, and it also is action.

A book is sent out into the world, and there is no way of fully anticipating the responses it will elicit. Consider the responses called forth by the Bible, Homer, Shakespeare - let alone contemporary poetry or a modern novel.

I love painting and music, of course. I don't know nearly as much about them as I know about poetry. I've certainly been influenced by fiction. I was overwhelmed by War and Peace when I read it, and I didn't read it until I was in my late 20s.

When it comes to writers and poets, for me it's Vinicius de Moraes. He's one of the greatest lyricists ever.

I didn't know any poets growing up in Kansas.

Francis Webb is easily our greatest poet and one of the greatest poets in the world but he's hardly ever mentioned.

Of poets I put Virgil first - he was greatest.

I meet kids now who become novelists, poets, write for the theater and movies, who were simply inspired by what they saw during the Spoleto Festival.

When I was ten, I spent a school holiday watching a lot of films: 'Dead Poets Society', 'Stand By Me', 'Home Alone' and 'The Goonies'. It completely inspired me. I told my parents I wanted to become an actor after that.

I'm very grateful to all the people of Fresno, to Philip Levine and all the poets before me, and all the farmworkers. I didn't get here by myself.

Alice Oswald. With Hughes and Heaney gone, people are looking around for the best British and Irish poets. Oswald is one of our finest.

I found poetry at 12 and 13 and, lo and behold, learned that my attorney father had a background in poetry - as he wore dashikis and Afros in the '70s and named his kids Arabic names. He was a poet and a lot like The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron and all of these folks. He definitely was an artist.

One of my very favourite poets was a Massachusetts poet named Robert Lowell.

I grew up in Banaras on Kabir and other Hindi poets and then I got introduced to Faiz, Hasrat Mohani, Allama Iqbal and Majaaz. They took me to another facet of literature and drama.

I think it's poignant and powerful, this idea that if someone knows your name, they have the ability to kind of hail you and make demands upon you.

If I can get you to laugh with me, you like me better, which makes you more open to my ideas. And if I can persuade you to laugh at the particular point I make, by laughing at it you acknowledge its truth.

What's the point of elections if everything is already decided?

Once you see the leader of the team, the point guard of the team who has the ball pretty much the whole time in the game directing everybody, I think it just rubs off on everybody.

I was just taught, the team goes how the point guard goes.

To most people who have a point of view, merely being on TV is an intrinsic good.

I think my Latino culture has equipped me with a different point of view than the rest of my counterparts, and seeing things from a different angle has helped me a lot. I feel very proud of my culture, of my Latino heritage.

Of all the mediums that influence language, I think film is the one that has the most effect. Not so much from the point of view of pronunciation and grammar. I don't think we pick up very many sounds and grammatical instructions from the films we see - but the catchphrases.

People are deciding - if they don't like a particular point of view or a particular paper, it goes out of business.