Madonna
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had an immeasurable impact on the young Madonna at a time when her personality was still forming. According to Ablow, the younger a child is at the time of a serious loss, the more profound the inluence and the longer lasting the impact. He concludes that "some people never reconcile themselves to such a loss at an early age, Madonna is not different than them." As they grew older, Madonna and her sisters would feel deep sadness as the vivid memory of their mother began drifting, farther from them. They would study pictures of her and come to think that she resembled poet Anne Sexton and Hollywood actresses. This would later raise Madonna's interest in poetry with Sylvia Plath being her favourite. Later, Madonna commented: "We were all wounded in one way or another by [her death], and then we spent the rest of our lives reacting
to it or dealing with it or trying to turn into something else. The anguish of losing my mom left me with a certain kind of loneliness and an incredible longing for something. If I hadn't had that emptiness, I wouldn't have been so driven. Her death had a lot to do with me saying—after I got over my heartache—I'm going to be really strong if I can't have my mother. I'm going to take care of myself." Taraborrelli felt that in time, no doubt because of the devastation she felt, Madonna would never again allow herself, or even her daughter, to feel as abandoned as she had felt when her mother died. "Her death had taught her a valuable lesson, that she would have to remain strong for herself because, she feared weakness—particularly her own—and wanted to be the queen of her own castle." In 1985, Madonna commented that the first song to ever make a strong impression on her was "These Boots Are Made for Walkin'" by Nancy Sinatra; she said it summed up her own "take-charge attitude". As a young woman, she attempted to broaden her taste in literature, art, and music, and during this time became interested in classical music. She noted that her favorite style was baroque, and loved Mozart and Chopin because she liked their "feminine quality". Other musical influences included artists Karen Carpenter, The Supremes, Led Zeppelin, and dancers such as Martha Graham and Rudolf Nureyev. Madonna's Italian-Catholic background and her relationship with her parents were reflected in the album Like a Prayer. It was an evocation of the impact religion had on her career. Her video for the title track contains Catholic