My songwriting is so influenced by orchestrated music, dramatic, super glam rock-y stuff. Two of my biggest influences in songwriting were Elton John and Freddie Mercury.

- Brandi Carlile

Your biggest influences are the earliest ones. When I was young, I was very influenced by the short stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne.

- Brad Holland

I was lucky. I had a lot of really good influences.

- Brad Dourif

My biggest musical influences are probably my parents.

- Bobby McFerrin

We weren't afraid to mix some crazy styles into the standard rockabilly look. We also took a lot of different musical influences that were part of that era.

- Brian Setzer

Movies are the biggest export in the world, the biggest American export. It influences people all over the world.

- Brett Ratner

My earliest influences were things I heard in my household.

- Boz Scaggs

It is not at all clear how much the media influences public opinion and how much public opinion influences the media.

- Bruce Jackson

I have a lot of different influences. Everything from Maroon 5, Gwen Stefani, The Clash, Kanye West - just a lot of different artists.

- Brie Larson

When I started out, I was definitely writing about experiences that I hadn't had yet. The songs were just based on my influences, songwriters that had written songs before me and that were more experienced and 20, 30 years older than me.

- Brandi Carlile

A lot of my male vocal influences are British - people like David Bowie, Freddie Mercury and Robert Plant.

- Adam Lambert

Shetland's influences are far more Scandinavian than Celtic.

- Ann Cleeves

My influences have been what I call my four Bs - the primary one being the blues, then Borges, Baraka, and Bearden.

- August Wilson

I still credit Adrian Lester with being one of my biggest influences.

- Ashley Madekwe

Daphne Guinness, who makes couture seem wearable, is an icon who influences what I wear.

- Ashley Madekwe

The West sometimes doesn't understand Bollywood, but they can definitely understand how Bollywood influences people.

- Anurag Kashyap

When you're crafting a character, it's good to have a lot of influences.

- Ansel Elgort

I just want to be told a story, and I want to believe I'm living that story, and I don't give a thought to influences or method or any other writerly concerns.

- Anne Tyler

I'd say my biggest influences are writers like Andre Norton and, particularly when it comes to the Radch, C.J. Cherryh.

- Ann Leckie

The best scientific way to discover if one factor influences another is to do a controlled experiment.

- Alison Gopnik