#influences

Suffice it to say I was compelled to create this group in order to find everyone who is, let's say, borrowing liberally from my INESTIMABLE FOLIO OF CANONICAL MASTERPIECES (sorry, I just do that sometimes), and get you all together. It's the least I could do. I mean, seriously. Those soliloquies in Moby-Dick? Sooo Hamlet and/or Othello, with maybe a little Shylock thrown in. Everyone from Pip in Great Expectations to freakin' Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre mentions my plays, sometimes completely mangling my words in nineteenth-century middle-American dialect for humorous effect (thank you, Sir Clemens). Many people (cough Virginia Woolf cough) just quote me over and over again without attribution. I hear James Joyce even devoted a chapter of his giant novel to something called the "Hamlet theory," though do you have some sort of newfangled English? It looks like gobbledygook to me. The only people who don't seek me out are like Chaucer and Dante and those ancient Greeks. For whatever reason. And then there are the titles. The Sound and the Fury? Mine. Infinite Jest? Mine. Proust, Nabokov, Steinbeck, and Agatha Christie all have titles that are me-inspired. Brave New World? Not just the title, but half the plot has to do with my work. Even Edgar Allan Poe named a character after my Tempest's Prospero (though, not surprisingly, things didn't turn out well for him!). I'm like the star to every wandering bark, the arrow of every compass, the buzzard to every hawk and gillyflower ... oh, I don't even know what I'm talking about half the time. I just run with it, creating some of the SEMINAL TOURS DE FORCE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE. You're welcome. ↗

— Sarah Schmelling

#literary-influences #william-shakespeare #inspirational

The tourist who moves about to see and hear and open himself to all the influences of the places which condense centuries of human greatness is only a man in search of excellence. ↗

— Max Lerner

#centuries #condense #excellence #greatness #hear

We were a Western civilisation, an English speaking civilisation, both NZ and Australia, and we had all these influences coming from both Great Britain and America to us; sending us their culture in the shape and form of movies and television. ↗

— Richard O'Brien

#australia #both #britain #civilisation #coming

As far as spiritual influences in Christian music, I would say Crystal Lewis - a lot of her songs especially. The ministry she has through her songs has really hit me. ↗

— Stacie Orrico

#christian #christian music #crystal #especially #far

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. ↗

— Paulina Rubio

#countries #different #different countries #example #expresses

I like to believe that everyone is born with the same skill set, and that it is the influences that one comes upon. ↗

— Ron Perlman

#born #comes #everyone #i #influences

As an adolescent, Vonnegut made my life bearable. ↗

— Jon Stewart

#life

For there is no creature whose inward being is so strong that it is not greatly determined by what lies outside it. ↗

— George Eliot

#influences #life #thoughts #life

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. ↗

— Ben Bernanke

#achieve #am #assure #committee #confirmed

One of Dickens' biggest influences was the growth of London as a Victorian city, and the extremes being created as it expanded. ↗

— Danny Boyle

#biggest #city #created #dickens #expanded