Jordan Peele Quotes

Everything I do references something that influenced me.

There are so many moments and works that influence us in what we do. Movies, music, TV and, most importantly, the profound everydayness of our lives.

You can go down the list of great artists and kind of understand that they are products of their environment. Whether it's U2 or Henry Rollins or myself or Johnny Lydon, they're gonna be products of their environment.

I recognize very much in Hopper that it does look like the United States; it looks like the 30's and my first impressions of everything, all of which I have to deal with and which gets mixed up in my work and probably gets mixed up in everybody else's work too.

My influences change all the time; they have to remain current, because they're the things that capture your imagination and make you want to go into the studio.

In a way I spend my entire life stealing from everything - from the past, from cities I love, from where I grew up - grabbing things, taking not only from architecture but from Italy, art, writing, poetry, music.

I take inspiration from books, movies, television, music - it all goes in the hopper. Depending on the project, I'm drawing from this or that piece of art that has stayed with me. Toni Morrison, George Romero, Sonic Youth - they are all in there.

If you look at any creative person's work, you can see bits and pieces of their influences. That's what an artist does.

Artwork, films, TV - it's always informed my work, no matter what I'm working on.

For me, as I was growing up, I studied architecture, I was into music, and I always felt that there was a gap between the things that I loved and consumed and who made them and how they made them.

It just sort of happened. I wrote like what I'd always read and what was in the movies... I'm sure popular music is supposed to be like this.

If an artist may say nothing except what he has invented by his own sole efforts, it stands to reason he will be poor in ideas. If he could take what he wants wherever he could find it, as Euripides and Dante and Michelangelo and Shakespeare and Bach were free, his larder would always be full, and his cookery might be worth tasting.

writers do not choose their subjects; their subjects choose them.

I've always had a certain fascination. It's basically paint what you know, and this is what I grew up with.

Sometimes when you're writing a song and that song comes into your head, it definitely comes from somewhere, like a real experience.

I've always kind of ripped from real life to some degree or at least how I'm feeling in the moment. In fact, maybe that's really it. In anything I've ever written, all the characters sound like me, which I don't think is a bad thing.

I don't pick and choose subjects or settings; they pick and choose me.

You'd have to be completely crazy not to be influenced by and take from other artists. It's completely impossible not to.

You can never tell when an artist really will take up someone's work and work with it happily.

I'm inspired by history, different periods.

I get to study and I got to mimic and what I basically did was I stole from every person that I could steal from. I was an imitator. That's what I was. It was years before I could take all of these things that I loved about all of these different artists and put them together and find my voice.

The places I visit in any given week are my home, so when I'm somewhere that feels good to me, it's a real game changer. If a place causes me to have a strong reaction, be it positive or negative, it'll often find its way into my music.

Music is the doorway that has led me to drawing, photography, and writing.

I don't believe that a writer does something wonderful spontaneously. I believe it's the result of years of living, of study, reading, his very personality and temperament. At one particular moment, all these come together and the artist 'expresses' himself.

The fact is that all writers create their precursors. Their work modifies our conception of the past, just as it is bound to modify the future.