Quotes About Influence

I've had my differences with Massive Attack, but you can't deny what they've done. They've changed the face of music. They should make up an award for them even if there ain't one.

I think the biggest influence on my stand-up would be Chris Rock, in that I love that Chris is basically an essayist, in that he'll take a subject and just try and attack it from as many different angles as he can.

Brad Pitt has something about him to where he's played different characters in all his movies, and every single time after he's done, I want to be him.

I feel I'll take on the responsibility of showing the world a whole different kind of Latin woman.

I'm very lucky my parents were into different kinds of music.

Was there any danger I could have gone down a different path were it not for boxing? Of course.

I believe everyone has the ability to be hypnotised, and I think, on different days, different people will have varying levels of susceptibility.

You can lose who you are so easily when you're being so many things to so many different people.

I'm a firm believer in utilizing celebrities because they tap into people on an emotional basis.

I was serious about ballet for a long time, but my mom got me into tap and jazz and modern and hip-hop, and I was one of those over-lessoned children.

The media doesn't create narratives, really. They're not that powerful. What they do is they tap into narratives that are already bubbling amongst their viewership or readership.

No one around me was obsessed with Fred Astaire except for me. It just snowballed, really. I started with tap lessons. When I didn't have tap shoes, I taped nickels on the bottom of my penny loafers.

I used to think I could save tap. But tap was here way before I was, and it's going to be here after I'm gone.

I grew up watching Gregory Hines banging out rhythms like drum beats, and Jimmy Slyde dancing these melodies, you know, bop-bah-be-do-bap, not just tap-tap-tap. Everyone else was dancing in monotone, but I could hear the hoofers in stereo, and they influenced me to have this musical approach towards tap.

'Spinal Tap' is interesting because it created a genre of film and ended it - all in one motion. If you do a mockumentary, you are always going to be compared with that film, and you are never going to be as funny.

It is so impossible to predict how much influence what you write will have, and what sorts of anxieties and imaginaries it will tap into.

I don't mind Twitter. But when a kid makes a decision based on how many Twitter followers he gets, that's when I'm about ready to tap out.

There are bands that make parodies of being in a band, like Spinal Tap. That's a big influence. They're making fun of a rock band, but they write lyrics that are better than real rock bands.

I remember listening to Eddie Murphy's Delirious on cassette tape - you might have to explain what that is to your younger demographic - with my father. I wanted to make people laugh that hard.

My first tape was 'Hey, I can do what y'all do.' It's new, flashy, and not through rap. It was a guy singing how cool he was. I'm here with big bro Drake; I'm his little gunner.

In the early '90s, my cousin gave me a Snoop Dogg cassette tape, and the rawness of the lyrics were something new to me.

We didn't know anything about comedy duos - Abbot and Costello, Martin and Lewis - we didn't know anything about that. Kim Fields showed us a tape of Martin and Lewis and their old shows and they come through the curtain so we started doing research on them.

My dad bought a Beatles tape when I was in fifth grade, and that was the first time I ever really - I mean I was into music, but that was the first time it really blew my mind. When I heard the 'Red Compilation,' which wasn't like a proper album, I thought, 'music was more than I had ever thought it was before.'

Both of my parents were super music lovers when I was growing up - they had a massive record and tape collection. I think my dad even had a couple of laser discs, but that was a short-lived thing.