The addictive pleasure of abandoning yourself to a book, of losing consciousness of your worries, your body, and your surroundings, to become a ghost haunting other worlds has influenced me in many ways.
Also, people are not often aware of the way the United States' policies influence what happens in places like Haiti or El Salvador or Nicaragua. Or in Columbia right now.
The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves.
I suggest that the only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little further down our particular path than we have yet gone ourselves.
From blood banking to the modern subway, from jazz to social justice, the contributions of African Americans have shaped and molded and influenced our national culture and our national character.
In an ideal world, you might imagine that scientific papers were only cited by academics on the basis of their content. This might be true. But lots of other stuff can have an influence.
The influence of a mother upon the lives of her children cannot be measured. They know and absorb her example and attitudes when it comes to questions of honesty, temperance, kindness, and industry.
Every drummer that had a name, had a name because of his individual playing. He didn't sound like anybody else, So everybody that I ever listened to, in some form, influenced my taste.
My mother was a huge influence on me. She was a living example of what a Christian should be. Her conviction, her discipline. She would rather see other people happy than herself.
I know how easy it is for some minds to glide along with the current of popular opinion, where influence, respectability, and all those motives which tend to seduce the human heart are brought to bear.
I'd begun reading Crumb shortly before that, and other underground stuff, so that was an influence to some degree. Of course the Marvel and DC comics, they had been my main interests in my teenage years.
When you're used to looking through a stills lens and you have to capture an emotional moment, and that picture is not moving and yet it has to have impact, I think that's the first influence on my style.
It follows from what we have just said, that the natural changes of monads come from an internal principle, since an external cause would be unable to influence their inner being.
I belong to the middle class that grew up very influenced by the Catholic church. The people of the novel are from a more pagan and practical world in which the Christianity is just a veneer.
Our enemy, the devil, wants to control us, and his target is our will. The main way he tries to influence our will is through lying to us.
What influences our behavior, and what our level of responsibility is, are very complex issues. And anytime we try to make this simplistic, we don't serve people well.
Most superheroes are painted with a specific moral objective that makes them who they are. And that moral objective influences everything they do, so there's an expectation for what you're going to see out of a certain character.
There was a writer in the '20s called Christopher Morley, who I remember a little bit of, who had some influence on me, but I couldn't tell you what it was.
For the most part, I've been influenced by black singers and singers I couldn't sound like. Whenever I tried to do a dark note or a bent note, I would just sound like Hootie And The Blowfish.
Whether it's a popcorn movie or some really intellectual sociopolitical movie, I think to some degree they're all influenced by the social climate that we're living in.
We influence others most profoundly when we do not seek to change them at all, but simply go about straightforwardly doing the right and loving thing.
