When I was a kid, there were some people around me who were a bad influence. When I met my girlfriend Sofia, who is now my wife, I think it all changed. She was very important for me, because she steered me back on to the path I wanted to be on.
If I had to name one book that has had the most lasting influence on my work, I would pick 'The Big Sea' by Langston Hughes.
I learned a lot about what I do with my craft, how I present my music. A lot of things about him were very much an influence on me and everybody else. Once you get in that fold and you're around it, you get to experience something that I don't think we'll ever see again. There will never be anybody like Frank Sinatra. Ever.
Robert Crumb is an influence on how I draw, but not on the subject matter I take or my approach. One thing I do like about Crumb is that he's chronicled his age, his times, and I think that is what artists should do.
Anything you read can influence your work, so I try to read good stuff.
The Christian church in the U.S. is still strong numerically, but it has lost its decisive influence both in American public life and in American culture as a whole, especially in the major elite institutions of society.
If you are in a position to influence someone, you are a leader.
As writers go, I have a skin of average thickness. I am pleased by a good review, disappointed by a bad. None of it penetrates far enough to influence the thing I write next.
My father had retained an emotional affection for the ceremonial of his parental home, without allowing it to influence his intellectual freedom.
For both reasons, owing to the thermal motion and to the working together of various wavelengths, factors arise which, in a similar manner to the structural factor, exert some influence upon the brightness of the interference points but not upon their location.
Coming from Haiti and growing up in Brooklyn, there's a lot of European influence when I get dressed up. I wear a lot of fitted suits, elegant cuts; I think it's cool to mash up a lot of different looks.
I wake up every morning happy for where I am in life. It's not all about the cooking, but the fact that I can contribute by using my influence to help people all over the country. In the last two years, my partners and I have fed more than 10 million hungry people by bringing meat to food banks.
The problem is that when government controls the economy, those who can influence government keep winning, and everybody else just stays the same.
I like the south of Spain, notably for the Moorish influence and the weather.
I have got nothing against family companies, but there must be real equity, that is all I say. It cannot be based on influence or political friendships. It has to be based on real equity backing their dreams.
I really do believe in the influence of your surroundings.
As a great man's influence never ends, so also there is not definite finality, no end, to a great survey; it runs along for centuries, ever responsive to the strain of the increasing needs of a growing population and an enlarging domain.
Some of the best times in my life happened under the influence of drugs... I'd still be doing it if I could make good judgement calls. I'd still be doing it if I didn't blow up to the size of an aircraft hangar, because it was a great time.
I always sang when I was little and my father, who was a great influence on me, also had a wonderful voice. He and my mother really encouraged me to sing and play the piano. They were always very supportive.
Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.
Absences are a good influence in love and keep it bright and delicate.
The good news is that parents are the leading influence on kids' decision not to drink alcohol.
My mom, who's been in the restaurant business for 40 years, is the number-one influence in my life. But I look up to a lot of people in the industry. Tops on my list is Mario Batali. My mom and Mario taught me the same lesson: Food is love.
Childhood didn't have a big influence on me, really - in fact I spent most of it plotting how to escape.
The stated mission at the time was simply to use the influence of the entertainment industry to do an accurate portrayal of drug and alcohol abuse. We all admit that we're not trying to censor anybody.
But, for instance, when I was awfully young, I read all the Oz books. They were an enormous influence on me.
Public influence is the real government of the world.
My parents, especially my mother, were no influence on me whatsoever.
Nico Tinbergen was my doctoral supervisor, and he was a benign, avuncular sort of influence; everybody loved him.
The only compensation, gained through the influence of nongovernmental organizations, consisted in slightly broadening for private individuals the possibility of access and appeal to the agencies enforcing the Covenant concerned with civil and political rights.
You don't have to be a 'person of influence' to be influential. In fact, the most influential people in my life are probably not even aware of the things they've taught me.
Many diseases including malaria, dengue, meningitis - just a few examples - these are what we call climate-sensitive diseases, because such climate dimensions for rainfall, humidity and temperature would influence the epidemics, the outbreaks, either directly influencing the parasites or the mosquitoes that carry them.
It is needless to say how great has been the influence of the doctrine of Evolution, or rather perhaps of the method of investigation to which it has given birth, upon the study of history, especially the history of institutions.
I was raised with a huge Armenian influence, always hearing stories of Armenia, celebrating Armenian holidays.
My worry about the New York Times is that it's got the only position as a national elitist general-interest paper. So the network news picks up its cues from the Times. And local papers do too. It has a huge influence. And we'd love to challenge it.
Every human being has a work to carry on within, duties to perform abroad, influence to exert, which are peculiarly his, and which no conscience but his own can teach.
