Quotes About Inspiration

The wonderful drama teacher at my high school, Barbara Patterson, saw me standing in the hall and told me I should audition for 'West Side Story.' I guess she thought I looked like a gang member.

My parents would have their friends over - their friends who thought, 'How can you live without a TV?' By the time they left, they understood why, because I had done the second act of 'West Side Story' and the first act of 'Jesus Christ Superstar,' playing all the parts. In many ways, that's what I'm still doing. I'm just getting paid better.

Gary Sinise and I go the furthest back of the Steppenwolf people; we were both saved from academic mediocrity as sophomores by being cast in 'West Side Story' by this transformationally beautiful teacher named Barbara Patterson.

Katherine Johnson is a shining example of what you can truly do with hard work and persistence. Under what had to be the most difficult of circumstances she persevered and stuck to her values. She is a real West Virginia and American hero. To honor her legacy every August 26th, on her birthday, is the least we can do.

There are so many great things happening in West Virginia, and I will continue to work every day to move our state forward.

I've farmed all my life and I have big ideas on how to grow agriculture jobs in West Virginia.

I first learned that there were black people living in some place called other than the United States in the western hemisphere when I was a very little boy, and my father told me that when he was a boy about my age, he wanted to be an Episcopal priest, because he so admired his priest, a black man from someplace called Haiti.

Modern science developed in the context of western religious thought, was nurtured in universities first established for religious reasons, and owes some of its greatest discoveries and advances to scientists who themselves were deeply religious.

I'm a big fan of gospel music, and you cannot be a fan of rock and roll, you cannot be a fan of country western music, and you can't really be a fan of jazz without listening to a lot of music that's religious.

Part of the reason why Kobe Bryant is such a big inspiration to me is because he was shipped off to the Lakers right out of high school. He went from English class to the Great Western Forum.

Back in Kuwait, I had started listening to a lot of English language music: western music, I would say - Kate Bush and Radiohead - and I loved Chet Baker, Etna James, a lot of singers and a lot of bands.

Lee Ann Womack is from near where I grew up in East Texas, so I've always looked up to her. I sang a lot of Dolly Parton as a kid and a lot of traditional western swing, like Patsy Cline and Roy Rogers.

As I was born and brought up in Himachal Pradesh, I used to listen to a lot of Hindi songs over radio apart from ghazals, western music, and 'Himachali' folk songs.

You can't make just foot-tapping numbers or take inspiration from Western music. Such songs won't work.

So I learnt a few country western songs, I bought a chord book, and right away I started writing my own stuff, which nobody else did that, I don't know why.

I was interested in both Western and Indian classical music.

I used to listen to country and western and blues, John Lee Hooker, spirituals, the Bluegrass Boys, and Eddie Arnold. There was a radio station that come on everyday with country, spirituals, and the blues.

I had been raised on country and western in Missouri. But gospel was great.

I think over the course of 14 films, I'm returning to a place that I know to tell a story... the same way Spielberg returned to fantasy, Lucas returned to the 'Star Wars' saga, or John Ford returned to the western.

When Nixon opened the door to China in the early 1970s, Chinese artists got their first view of the West. Suddenly five centuries of Western art lay before them as a stylistic smorgasbord. Chinese artists could reinterpret it out of admiration or try to replace it. They choose the former.

It's hard not to think of Jack Ford when you're making a Western. Hard not to think of him when you're making any picture.

I had no plan to write a western novel, and when I realized it was happening, I was pretty surprised by it. But you have to go with what feels right.

I've got great joy from rediscovering Western music. I love Schumann and Chopin, and those amazing symphonies of Bruckner.

Western civilization shapes the content of my films, provides me with subjects that haven't been used before.