If you look at any CREATIVE person's WORK, you can SEE BITS and pieces of their influences. That's what an artist does.

A child rightly trained may be a world-wide blessing, with an influence reaching onward to eternal years. But a NEGLECTED or misdirected DIRECTED child may live to blight and BLAST mankind, and leave influences of evil which shall roll on in increasing VOLUME TILL they plunge into the gulf of eternal perdition.

Nothing changes more CONSTANTLY than the past; for the past that influences our lives does not CONSIST of what ACTUALLY HAPPENED, but of what men believe happened.

I SAY that I do soul, R&B MUSIC. I have so many influences, from Billie Holiday, Nina Simone to Stevie Wonder and Prince and EVEN Al GREEN and Bjork. And a lot of hip hop music has influenced me a lot - you know - De La Soul and Digital Underground and A Tribe Called Quest.

Morals are BUILT on RELIGIOUS FAITH. VIRTUE is built on MORALITY and influences a culture.

Of COURSE, I'm of the GENERATION that GREW up with Hemingway and Faulkner as strong INFLUENCES.

As FAR as RAP goes, I grew up in Hollis, Queens, so early influences were PEOPLE LIKE Run DMC and LL Cool J.

At 16 I was living in the Congo, and, you know, it's your teenage TIME. I really WANTED to find a way to express myself, so I started to write songs in the Congo, and I think that's why my music is quite open, with a lot of different INFLUENCES.

I think sometimes when trades are MADE the beginning of the season on PAPER, they LOOK great. It just takes TIME. Sometimes the process by the media or outside INFLUENCES or sources want it to be now. Sometimes it doesn't work that way.

My passion is music, you know, and music INFLUENCES culture, influences lifestyle, which LEADS me to 'Roc-A-Wear'. I was forced to be an ENTREPRENEUR, so that led me to be CEO of 'Roc-A-Fella' RECORDS, which lead to Def JAM.

I can't TELL you any more than any other WRITER can tell you why they WRITE, and I don't KNOW what my INFLUENCES are.

Ric Flair, The Freebirds, and The Rockers were GREAT influences in my DECISION to BECOME a WRESTLER.

The early influences, in many ways, were in Baltimore. I was passing open windows where there might be a radio PLAYING something funky. In the summertime, sometimes there'd be a man sitting on a STEP, playing an ACOUSTIC GUITAR, playing some kind of FOLK blues. The seed had been planted.