Kenneth Williams Quotes

Sam Shepard is - I didn't tell this to Sammy, but if I had to point to one artist that made me want to do this for my life, it's Sam Shepard.

I never consciously set out to model myself after Upton Sinclair.

I'm not trying to be the next Joan Rivers.

I've patterned myself after my musical heroes.

I always love the court fool in Shakespearean times, in Henry VIII's time. The fool can say all kinds of stuff that the other people can't say, so I'm hoping I might take that role.

Getting to work with Edie Falco and watching her be a quiet presence - but a very powerful presence - and so brilliant and free? That was the first person I saw where I was like, 'I want to emulate that.'

I learned to act by watching Martha Graham dance, and I learned to dance by watching Charlie Chaplin act.

Basketball allowed me to revere my father without him knowing what I was up to. I took up basketball as a form of homage and mimicry.

My life has been a poor attempt to imitate the man, I'm just a living legacy to the leader of the band.

About four years ago I made a list, for my own amusement, of the playwrights, the contemporary playwrights, by whom critics said I'd been influenced. I listed twenty-five. It included five playwrights whose work I didn't know, so I read these five playwrights and indeed now I suppose I can say I have been influenced by them. The problem is that the people who write these articles find the inevitable similarities of people writing in the same generation, in the same century, and on the same planet, and they put them together in a group.

I believe that the source of your inspiration is very important. I sometimes see this problem with photographers, even very good ones, who have drawn too much inspiration from photography and who, over time, have a problem forming their own identity.

I'm more influenced by novelists than I am by filmmakers.

[Kids] don't remember what you try to teach them. They remember what you are.

A literary influence is never just a literary influence. It's also an influence in the way you see everything - in the way you feel your life.

It is inconceivable how much wit it requires to avoid being ridiculous.

He invades authors like a monarch; and what would be theft in other poets is only victory in him.

The best point of my novels, I think, is their humor. I want to keep many my works humorous.

Another older writer that had a huge influence on me is Chekhov. More contemporarily, it's hard to say.

My style of performance poetry came from the beatniks, Allen Ginsberg.

When you recognize good writing and you're lucky enough to get it, like with Lost, that's what I follow.

First, find out what your hero wants, then just follow him.

All techniques of comedy are valid and interesting to me.

I don't think there's anything really wrong with influence because I think that one can use another man's art as material either literally or just implying that they're doing that, without it representing a lack of a point of view.

I don't believe in originality in art. I think we exist on this earth to inspire each other, through our actions, through our deeds, and through who we are. We're always borrowing.

You know if I see a work that really I am very affected by and inspired by then it makes me want to try things with my work that maybe I hadn't considered trying before and I think that is the biggest complement that you can pay somebody.