#influences

I think more than writers, the major influences on me have been European movies, jazz, and Abstract Expressionism. ↗

— Don DeLillo

#been #european #expressionism #i #i think

I'm formally trained, I don't know what classically trained really means. I've worked with Sanford Meisner. And I've worked at Circle Rep with Marshall W. Mason and Lanford Wilson and some really good people. I was lucky. I had a lot of really good influences. ↗

— Brad Dourif

#classically #formally #good #good people #had

A lot of people have gotten into comedy because of certain influences in their lives or events that were painful, and I really have wracked my brain to figure it out. I pretty much have had a normal childhood. Maybe it was too normal. ↗

— Will Ferrell

#brain #certain #childhood #comedy #events

While growing up in Birmingham around a lot of West Indian people, reggae and calypso were big influences early on but Otis Redding was the one person who made me wanna sing myself. ↗

— Roland Gift

#big #birmingham #early #growing #growing up

People always ask about my influences, and they cite a bunch of people I've never heard of. ↗

— Norton Juster

#always #ask #bunch #cite #heard

Benny Goodman was one of the big influences as a clarinet player. That's why I wanted the clarinet. ↗

— Lee Konitz

#big #clarinet #goodman #i #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

I have a lot of influences. I'm American-schooled. I'm classically trained. I'm a pretty universal student, if you will. I have a lot of degrees, which really don't pay the rent. I have two doctorate degrees, I have a bachelor's degree, but I'm still a cook. ↗

— Emeril Lagasse

#classically #cook #degree #degrees #doctorate

My family... always had the value of the family table and these cultural influences of growing up. ↗

— Emeril Lagasse

#cultural #family #growing #growing up #had

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