I like things that grow (like people, love, plants, storms...many things.)
Trouble-makers, but only mostly ones I know already. I don't like your crappy metal band already, I promise.
Tons and tons. Ella Fitzgerald, Regina Spektor, Ingrid Michaelson, Paolo Nutini, Fiona Apple, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, R.E.M., Smashing Pumpkins, The Decemberists, Miles Davis, The Shins, Cake, Jolie Holland, Ray LaMontagne, Billy Joel, Rod Stewart, Claude DeBussy, The Killers, David Bowie, Gorillaz, et plus...
A Prayer for Owen Meaney, Le Petit Prince, Anything Toni Morrison (but particularly "Song of Solomon" and "The Bluest Eye."), Fight Club, Into the Wild, White Oleander, Memories of my Melancholy Whores
(How about...inspirations) Old people, children (they're so unabashedly imaginative. Effortlessly intuitive about their artwork in ways I am working hard to harnass), Bettie Page, Gustav Klimt, Joan Miro, Vincent Van Gogh, Rene Magritte, Wangechi Mutu, Johannes Vermeer, Salvador Dali, Matisse, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Antoine de Saint-Exupery. They all blow my mind one way or the other. Anyone who can show me something I've never seen before.