As an African-American male born with a couple of strikes against you because of your skin color, I think it's very, very important to have some positive role models around, especially male influences.

I draw on a lot of cinematic influences like Ingmar Bergman and Wim Wenders, artists who let a story take its time. Comics are a visual medium, and visuals should be allowed to tell some of that story.

During the writing process, I tend not to listen to too much music. I obviously wear a lot of influences on my sleeve, but if I was listening to too many records, I would turn into too much of a monkey.

My mom is an elementary school music teacher, a pianist, and a singer, and my dad plays guitar - he's a huge Bruce Springsteen fan. My mom does musical theater, too. All of those influences were around.

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?

In the early part of the '70s, we had glam rock, but we also had reggae and ska happening at the same time. I just took all those influences I had as a kid and threw them together, and somehow it works.

I'm a sponge when it comes to stories. I'd say everything influences me in some way, but for 'Red Queen' in particular, I was really affected by the 'A Song of Ice and Fire' series by George R. R. Martin.

I really like the look of the 1950s, lots of suburban Americana influences. I'm 5'4', so I like kitten heels occasionally because I can move around a bit easier, but pointy-toed pumps are very elongating.

I always had influences musically with punk, and then growing up, I dyed my hair every color. I did the dip-dye blue, before anybody was dip-dyeing their hair. And streaks of pinks and purples and whatnot.

I speak Swedish, it's my first language. Of course, growing up with Latin American parents from Argentina, I also have some other influences from other cultures. But Sweden is where I feel the most at home.

These are the influences that everybody has. Some individuals might stand out because of one thing or another, but whether one's perception as a child of what was important or not is accurate, I don't know.

In terms of specific cinematic influences, certainly I'd recommend 'Juan de los Muertos,' and I also really love this French zombie movie - 'Les Revenants' - where the dead reanimate for no apparent reason.

A year or so ago I went through all the people in my life and asked myself: does this person inspire me, genuinely love me and support me unconditionally? I wanted nothing but positive influences in my life.

There are a lot of influences from different countries in my music. For example, I chose the guitar in my music, I think that it is a feminine instrument, so when I do not sing, the music expresses my voice.

I grew up in a family with two very strong women, my mother and my older sister, and they were big influences on my life. I've spent a life loving women, and studying them as much as I can, or am allowed to.

You can get really left of centre influences in mainstream pop. Michael Jackson and Prince are some of the most progressive artists ever if you actually dissect their songs there's some crazy stuff going on.

Don't copy another writer's style, because that is not authentic, and that's how it will sound. You develop your style over your whole life and through countless influences. Don't impose something artificial.

I don't want you to think that I'm up late reading a stack of Spider-Man comics and eating a tray of lemon cookies while sucking my thumb. I'm not doing that. But I am loyal to the influences of my childhood.

If you're going to spend two or three years of your life working on something, you've got to be making the kind of movie that discusses and influences the culture and is engaged in the world you're living in.

What you wear can largely govern your feelings and your emotions, and how you look influences the way people regard you. So fashion plays an important role on both the practical level and the aesthetic level.

Everybody influences everybody else, in my opinion. There are different trends in music all the time. No matter who starts them, if it's a true trend in the music, it ends up influencing other people as well.

When starting a project, your influences are the things around you. It doesn't mean you have to sound like it or look like it or anything. It's just something new, and your curiosity becomes enthralled by it.

When it comes to other people's writing, my older influences are more powerful than more recent ones, partially because I'm now more worried that I'll suddenly accidentally steal something from another writer.

I'm building my fan base around the fact that here's someone who does things a little differently, who brings other musical influences into country music, and you never really know what she's going to do next.

Events of human origin are uncertain, but all is regulated and governed by the incalculable power of God, inspiring us not through drunken fury nor by frantic movement, but through the influences of the stars.

I think you're a product of your influences, your environment. You see guys with so much talent, but they got the wrong people around them telling them the wrong things. They wind up going down the wrong path.

The songs are not necessarily autobiographical. A lot of songs are a combination of influences. It might be some part of my life, or something I've felt, or something somebody's told me. It all comes together.

But design has never been a Europe-only project. The best of design has global influences. And we've got to design the future immigration system to make sure that we continue to attract the brightest and best.

I got my influences from '70s bands - Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, blah blah blah. When I was growing up, we had all these crazy bands on the Top 40. Today, if Pink Floyd released 'Money,' it wouldn't even get played.

American books reflect our common heritage with many other nations and their influence upon our culture. The influences are endless, linking us with the rest of the world. Thus, they are good ambassadors for us.

I've been blessed to surround myself with good parents, and good people, and I think that's the secret: Surround yourself with people that are positive influences in your life that want to help and want to care.

The mind of the polyglot is a very particular thing, and scientists are only beginning to look closely at how acquiring a second language influences learning, behavior and the very structure of the brain itself.

Whatever things may have been in their origin, they are what they are, both in themselves and in regard to their indications respecting other beings or influences the existence of which may be implied in theirs.

I assure this committee that, if I am confirmed, I will be strictly independent of all political influences... essential to that institution's ability to function effectively and achieve its mandated objectives.

I took a lot of influences from Studio Ghibli, which is the Japanese animation studio that made 'Spirited Away' and 'Castle in the Sky.' They're like the Japanese version of Disney - but without all the schmaltz.

Probably my favorite artists to listen to James Taylor, Stevie Wonder - I haven't gone back in a really long time and really listened to them - my first guitar influences. It's been awhile since I revisited that.

Any new ideas go into PiL. My inspiration is everything that the human being gets up to. I don't listen to any music when I'm in PiL-zone, because influences can poison your well. Otherwise, I listen to anything.

I definitely take influences from my idols David Bowie and Billy Joel. I've combined them with the Frankie Grande-isms that I've cultivated over singing every night for two shows a week for four years on Broadway.

Music changes constantly, especially when you're a 'pop' artist. What's mainstream or pop always has new influences, new sounds, and I love that challenge of keeping up with it, which is important as a pop artist.

Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day always says we were influences on him, because he does melodic but distorted, like what we were doing. The Ramones were doing it. We were doing it. The Buzzcocks, all those bands.

People like Sam Smith and Adele, they're album artists but for me, where I go around the world and sounds are changing so quickly, singles are the best way to get those influences out there and try new things out.

They say your childhood influences your tastes and interests, or your approach if you're an artist. So what you create, whatever you saw, whatever your childhood was like - it influences how you're going to end up.

When I sit down with filmmakers, I feel like we speak the same language in a lot of ways. We watch the same movies and have the same influences. If anything, it creates a dialogue that makes my work more effective.

If we are going to list guitar influences, the biggest one by far is Wes Montgomery. Also, Gary Burton was obviously huge for me in a number of ways. But beyond that, Clifford Brown, Miles Davis and Freddie Hubbard.

In the film industry, we tend to pick up where others have left off, and I'd like to think the influences I picked up from Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, Sylvester Stallone and Jean-Claude Van Damme are visible in my work.

I think of makeup as more like a design, decoration, or jewelry. I mean, it's literally paint; it's art. I don't prefer to use it as concealing anything because it influences the illusion of standardized perfection.

I have only read very classic traditional English ghost stories, other than Henry James, who wrote some magnificent short ones as well as the longer 'Turn of the Screw.' He, Dickens, and M.R. James are my influences.

Nature, of course, has its share in the life of the soul and in numerous manifestations deeply influences human life. But this natural life of the soul is peripheral, mere appendix to the material phenomena of nature.

My upbringing has always been quite equal in terms of cultural influences. But it's unlikely that anything could prepare you for a job that involves belting out Proclaimers songs on camera, in Edinburgh and in public.

When I try to explain to people the big influences in my life, or at least when I first started, the most important ones were my friends who were also writing songs and were typically four or five years older than me.

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