#influences

Any ground subtracts its own hue from the colors which it carries and therefore influences. ↗

— Josef Albers

#carries #colors #ground #hue #influences

Coleridge wrote a poem called ‘The Eolian Harp,’ in which he explored the notion of music slumbering on its instrument. It's a gorgeous poem! It moves through thoughts and moods of the soul as if we're all but harps waiting for a breeze to pass through us to animate us. I feel the same way about art: that it is something that on many levels colonises you, gets inside you and changes you from the inside out. I find that happens with books, too. After I’ve read a book, for a couple of days afterwards I think in the patterns of the book’s writing, because the act of reading is an act of organising your own thought process. If you are reading someone else’s writing, you are having to organise your perception along someone else’s structure. So if I read a book by Terry Pratchett, a few days later there is still a little Terry Pratchettness to my thoughts. When I read something by Catherynne Valente, for quite a few days there is a kind of ‘jewelled’ quality to my thoughts. To read a book is to let someone else reach inside me and reorganise me. As a writer, I find it very difficult to start writing immediately after having read another writer's book. I have to digest it first, and let the influence pass… ↗

— Amal El-Mohtar

#influences #inspiration #reading #writing #art

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

My influences were Peter Sellers and the great British character actors. ↗

— Tracey Ullman

#character #character actors #great #influences #peter

I put together the influences of my life in as clear a way as I possibly can, in the same way that Beethoven or Schoenberg or Bach put their influences together. ↗

— John Zorn

#beethoven #clear #i #influences #life

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. ↗

— Tracy Chapman

#combination #comes #felt #i #influences

Elvis Presley, The Everly Brothers, and a lot of American artists were my greatest influences. ↗

— Gordon Waller

#artists #brothers #elvis #elvis presley #everly

I think every once in a while country has lost its way, but found its way back. It's always going to drift away from the traditional side, but then find a way to return. There's room for all kinds of influences be it pop, blues, gospel or whatever. But I will always say that I think we need more traditional country music coming down the pike. ↗

— Randy Travis

#away #back #blues #coming #country

I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences. ↗

— Walt Whitman

#art #been #beyond #democracy #displacing