Iris Murdoch did influence my early novels very much, and influence is never entirely good.
I am the product of Denny O'Neil in many ways, I carry forth a lot of what Denny instilled in me.
As a kid, I was obsessed with 'Calvin and Hobbes' and 'Bone,' and I'm certain that I've unconsciously ripped off ideas from both, wholesale.
We're all living on borrowed time. The trick is to come up with works of sufficient interest to pay off the debt.
For whatever crispness and animation my writing has I give some credit to the cartoonist manque.
No one is making extraordinary things alone. They might be alone in their bedroom while they're recording or writing, but they didn't actually conjure that thing out of nothing - without influence - without assistance - without anything.
My greatest influence is Jimi Hendrix, and if he's been reincarnated, or if he's looking down, sideways, or looking up, I just wanted to tell him that I love him and thank him for opening doors for me. I just wanted to make it beautiful for him.
To you, W. B. Yeats, good praiser, wholesome dispraiser, heavy-handed judge, open-handed helper of us all, I offer a play of my plays for every night of the week, because you like them, and because you have taught me my trade.
I'm scared to give gratitude to the people that, if I hadn't heard their stuff, I wouldn't be able to make music.
If it weren't for the Beatles, I would not be a musician.
We've all been influenced by other people...If Minnie Riperton never existed, would I have even thought of singing in that (upper) register? I doubt it.
Everything I do is in a New York state of mind. I'm indebted to preserving the sound of the city.
Without those forerunners, Jane Austen and the Brontes and George Eliot could no more have written than Shakespeare could have written without Marlowe, or Marlowe without Chaucer, or Chaucer without those forgotten poets who paved the ways and tamed the natural savagery of the tongue. For masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common, of thinking by the body of the people, so that the experience of the mass is behind the single voice.
Crumb was such an influence on me. He's such a visionary, such a great artist, that he so shaped my artistic sensibilities on a certain level that I do owe everything to him. The way I see the world is largely changed by him.
I think you have to show homage to creators.
I just feel I got my inspiration, education and all from others that came before me. And I added my... I don't even know if I added anything. I played what they played, and it sounded different, I guess.
I am what I am as a writer because of Norman Lear and Spike Lee. Norman Lear in particular.
Every writer is a writer of the generation before.
In terms of screenwriting adaptations it's trying to cut out stuff that's extraneous, without doing damage to the original piece, because you owe a debt of some respect to the original author. That's why it was bought.
So much of what I create has been due to the influence of Miles Davis and Donald Byrd, and so many of those that have passed on. Their music, their legacy lives on with the rest of us because we are so highly influenced by their experience and what they have given us.
Scott Aukerman and Judd Apatow are two people who I owe a lot to, and it's always great to work with Scott whenever I can.
In fact, the influence of Schoenberg may be overwhelming on his followers, but the significance of his art is to be identified with influences of a more subtle kind - not the system, but the aesthetic, of his art. I am quite conscious of the fact that my Chansons madécasses are in no way Schoenbergian, but I do not know whether I ever should have been able to write them had Schoenberg never written.
One of my favorite modern American authors is Denis Johnson. I'm deeply inspired by all of his work - I rip him off constantly.
My songs would be nothing had it not been for my father. I follow his footsteps.
Everyone writes in Tolstoy's shadow, whether one feels oneself to be Tolstoyan or not.
