What inspires me about rap is that it’s written in an almost poetic way. I just think it’s so cool.

Writing and cafes are strongly linked in my brain.

Art’s everything we hope life would be, a lot of times.

Nothing is impossible, the word itself says ‚I’m possible‘!

My entire childhood was steeped in poverty. For me, poverty, in a way, was the first inspiration of my life, a commitment to do something for the poor.

My grandfather once ventured upon publishing a volume of hymns. I never heard anyone speak in their favour or argue that they ought to have been sung in the congregation. In that volume, he promised a second if the first should prove acceptable. We forgive him the first collection because he did not inflict another.

People like music when they’re in love, but they don’t need it as much. You need music when you’re missing someone or you’re pining for someone or you’re forgetting someone or you’re trying to process what just happened.

When I listen to a song, I don’t say, ‚Oh my gosh, that vocal line she sang was the best thing I ever heard.‘ I’m thinking, ‚That lyric just moves me. That lyric just said what I feel better than I could say it myself.‘

If you wish to be a writer, write.

The thing about being an artist today is you get to develop right in front of people’s eyes before you even put out an album.

A #2 pencil and a dream can take you anywhere.

The artist in me cries out for design.

Love and desire are the spirit’s wings to great deeds.

I’ve always felt music is the only way to give an instantaneous moment the feel of slow motion. To romanticise it and glorify it and give it a soundtrack and a rhythm.

No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.

There’s something about music that encourages people to want to know more about the person that made it, and where it was recorded, what year it was done, what they were listening to, and all this kind of stuff. There’s something that invites all this obsessive behavior.

I play piano every day. I enjoy that.

It’s important to love in hip hop.

Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor.

The instrument that I never learned how to play was my fans. You know, they are the part of the story that nobody teaches you. I just want to do the right thing; I want to be a voice with them, among them.

I enjoy singing my songs in front of people.

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

Men of lofty genius sometimes accomplish the most when they work least, for their minds are occupied with their ideas and the perfection of their conceptions, to which they afterwards give form.

My goal in music is to create nostalgic moments.

When I got depressed, I watched Bruce Lee movies. I learned everything from Bruce Lee.

Knowledge is a polite word for dead but not buried imagination.

Doing the box set is one of those things where you get to rewrite your own history to some extent. We could take out some of the songs that we felt weren’t as strong as some of the others, so you look better.

Millions of people were inspired by the Apollo Program. I was five years old when I watched Apollo 11 unfold on television, and without any doubt it was a big contributor to my passions for science, engineering, and exploration.

The basis of our partnership strategy and our partnership approach: We build the social technology. They provide the music.

I would venture to guess that Anon, who wrote so many poems without signing them, was often a woman.

Van Gogh never made a penny in his entire lifetime. He painted because it was his soul, his excitement. It was what aligned him with his Source of being. It’s the same with me and writing.

Nature that framed us of four elements, warring within our breasts for regiment, doth teach us all to have aspiring minds.

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

My mother is a strong, wonderful woman. I could never be anything she didn’t want me to be.

Art never harms itself by keeping aloof from the social problems of the day: rather, by so doing, it more completely realises for us that which we desire.

Even if my songs are quite sad or quite dark, I don’t want my songs to make people sad. It’s very important for me that all my songs have some kind of hope or light.

I never look at my watch when I’m sketching!

Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.

Kanye West is my favorite artist.

The smallest seed of faith is better than the largest fruit of happiness.

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.

The first rap CD that I had, it was so different for me. The energy, the wordplay, all that caught my attention, and I liked it.

I think ‚Hail to the Chief‘ has a nice ring to it.

Unless I am both capable of and willing to reopen the wound every time I write a song, if I choose to not look inside myself to write music, I’m really not worth being called an artist at all.

A leader is a dealer in hope.

Aim for the highest.

The great fun in my life has been getting up every morning and rushing to the typewriter because some new idea has hit me.

I must have a prodigious quantity of mind; it takes me as much as a week sometimes to make it up.

My whole life and my whole career, even through my music, I tell people: let’s unify; let’s show more love.

If you’re living in your time, you cannot help but to write about the things that are important.

If they can make penicillin out of mouldy bread, they can sure make something out of you.

I would say that I’m more moved by melody, even though I love to rap.

To love one that is great, is almost to be great one’s self.

I’m just a kid that defied the odds. I’m just a kid that ignored the doubt. I’m just a kid from a little place in Dublin, Ireland, that went all the way, and I’m going to continue to go all the way.

Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.

I never woke up and thought, ‚I really want to live a bold life.‘

The thing about hip-hop today is it’s smart, it’s insightful. The way they can communicate a complex message in a very short space is remarkable.

It is one thing to record an album but it’s a huge difference when people play it and listen to it and embrace it the way that I do. It has always been my dream to get my music out to the world and have people hear it.

A loving heart is the truest wisdom.

As the poet said, ‚Only God can make a tree,‘ probably because it’s so hard to figure out how to get the bark on.

Nor shall derision prove powerful against those who listen to humanity or those who follow in the footsteps of divinity, for they shall live forever. Forever.