Pop culture. Comics, movies, music, books, art, even sports...
No Knife, Neutral Milk Hotel, Sigur Ros, Mogwai, The Joggers, The Strokes, Taleb Kweli, MF Doom, New Pornographers, Ben Folds, Godspeed You Black Emperor, Mastodon, Dimmu Borgir, The Postal Service, Stars, Cake, Iron & Wine, The Sundays, Eisley, Spoon, French Kicks, Sunny Day Real Estate, Howard Shore, John Williams, and way too many more..
The Usual Suspects, Lord of the Rings, Fight Club, The Big Lebowski, Tarantino films, Sin City, Snatch, Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels, Bubba Ho-tep, Evil Dead films, Shaun of the Dead, Seven, Star Wars, Machinist, X-Men movies, Office Space, Anchorman, Blade Runner, Leon: The Professional, Gladiator, Groundhog Day, Lost in Translation, The Life Aquatic, Ran, Seven Samurai, Grosse Pointe Blank, High Fidelity, Back to the Future trilogy, Swingers, Godfather, Black Hawk Down, City of God, American Splendor, Ghost World, Batman Begins, and waaaay too many more to mention.
Family Guy, Firefly, Spaced, Lost, Futurama, Alias, 24, Law & Order, Reno 911, Arrested Development, South Park, Justice League, Seinfeld, Wonderfalls, The Office (UK and US), Ali G, Adult Swim, UFC.
Anything by Chuck Palahniuk, Brad Meltzer, Greg Rucka, Mike Carey, Rick Remender, Brian Azzarello, Warren Ellis, Grant Morrison, Garth Ennis, Alan Moore, Brian Michael Bendis, Ed Brubaker, JRR Tolkien, David Mack, and wayyyy too many to remember.
My mother, above all else. She had to raise both me, and my brother by herself, and gave us great lives. My brother, because he fought the odds and won, in both his health and his career path.