I love the immediacy of those old analog machines; it's really inspiring. You just set them up to play, and they go, playing the same thing until you switch the pattern.
Women are just so much tougher and more patient than men are - their capacity for empathy blows me away. And their capacity to deal with stress for long periods of time is also kind of awe inspiring.
That little window like 2004 through like 2010 was probably the most, like most inspiring time of my creative life, for sure.
When I was a senior in college, I attended an inspiring conference at West Point called the Student Conference on U.S. Affairs, which paired political science majors with cadets in the hopes of building future civilian-military relationships.
With the supermarket as our temple and the singing commercial as our litany, are we likely to fire the world with an irresistible vision of America's exalted purpose and inspiring way of life?
It is so inspiring when you come across a woman who is very strong and dedicated and is amazing at what they do. That's how I feel about Meryl Streep. You watch her, and you can't help but notice all of that about her. She's so influential.
I have a photograph at home of Fred Astaire from the knees down with his feet crossed. It's kind of inspiring because it reminds me his feet were bleeding at the end of rehearsals. Yet when you watch him, all you see is freedom. It's a reminder of what the job is about in general, not just being in musicals.
What influenced me was Tori Amos, who was unapologetic about expressing anger through music, and Sinead O'Connor. Those two in particular were really moving for me, and very inspiring, before I wrote 'Jagged Little Pill.'
But once I acclimated and really used fame for what it was offering me as a tool to serve my life purpose of inspiring and contributing, then it started to get fun again.
And Marx spoke of the fact that socialism will be the kingdom of freedom, where man realizes himself in a way that humankind has never seen before. This was an inspiring body of literature to read.
