Rhyme patterns are nothing without meanings to the words. A lot of rappers can do those flows, but the raps aren’t really about anything – which is cool sometimes, but to have the flow and the message is one of my favorite things.

One of the disadvantages of wine is that it makes a man mistake words for thoughts.

I think Ye is important to hip-hop.

Words can be said in bitterness and anger, and often there seems to be an element of truth in the nastiness. And words don’t go away, they just echo around.

My message to the Americans is the same as to everyone – that is to unite behind the science and to act on the science.

Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation.

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author’s private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

You hesitate to stab me with a word, and know not – silence is the sharper sword.

If you wish to know the mind of a man, listen to his words.

If I have something to say, I want it to be meaningful.

For just when ideas fail, a word comes in to save the situation.

One great use of words is to hide our thoughts.

It’s amazing how people will give when you don’t ask. Many of them send money because they believe in the message.

We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.

Everything that’s created comes out of silence. Your thoughts emerge from the nothingness of silence. Your words come out of this void. Your very essence emerged from emptiness. All creativity requires some stillness.

My life is my message.

Personally, I just think rap music is the best thing out there, period. If you look at my deck in my car radio, you’re always going to find a hip-hop tape; that’s all I buy, that’s all I live, that’s all I listen to, that’s all I love.

If a word in the dictionary were misspelled, how would we know?

In the grip of a neurological disorder, I am fast losing control of words even as my relationship with the world has been reduced to them.

All knowledge which ends in words will die as quickly as it came to life, with the exception of the written word: which is its mechanical part.

He who speaks without modesty will find it difficult to make his words good.

People want to listen to a message, word from Jah. This could be passed through me or anybody. I am not a leader. Messenger. The words of the songs, not the person, is what attracts people.

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.

Ten people who speak make more noise than ten thousand who are silent.

I think we’re still in a muddle with our language, because once you get words and a spoken language it gets harder to communicate.

Words are also actions, and actions are a kind of words.

Truthful words are not beautiful; beautiful words are not truthful. Good words are not persuasive; persuasive words are not good.

Say there’s a white kid who lives in a nice home, goes to an all-white school, and is pretty much having everything handed to him on a platter – for him to pick up a rap tape is incredible to me, because what that’s saying is that he’s living a fantasy life of rebellion.

I’m happy to be a writer – of prose, poetry, every kind of writing. Every person in the world who isn’t a recluse, hermit or mute uses words. I know of no other art form that we always use.

Look at Pusha-T. He makes a certain type of rap music. ‚Daytona‘ is that on the highest level.

Words, words, mere words, no matter from the heart.

I have an answering machine in my car. It says, I’m home now. But leave a message and I’ll call when I’m out.

A word is dead when it is said, some say. I say it just begins to live that day.

Words, words, words! They shut one off from the universe. Three quarters of the time one’s never in contact with things, only with the beastly words that stand for them.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

Poetry is when an emotion has found its thought and the thought has found words.

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.

I don’t want to just preach to the church. I feel like I have a broader message.

I could talk all day, T stands for talking, T stands for tender, T stands for things that don’t even rhyme with T.

Great nations write their autobiographies in three manuscripts – the book of their deeds, the book of their words and the book of their art.

Silence is more eloquent than words.

The finest language is mostly made up of simple unimposing words.

If you’re going to write about rap music and hip-hop, and you don’t love it, then we don’t need your opinion, and we revoke your opinion.

Music in itself carries a whole set of messages which are very, very rich and complex, and the words either serve to exclude certain ones or point up certain others.

All my life I’ve looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

I used to really love Fiend, but he stopped. He just stopped. Every time he had a project, every project – ‚There’s One In Every Family,‘ ‚Street Life‘ – I had to have them. And he just stopped. And that was disappointing, ‚cause that was my favorite rapper at one time.

The difference between a stranger sending you a message that you might be interested in at a very low volume level, no repetition, just sending it to very few people, and that being done as spam – those things get close enough that you want to be careful never to filter out something that’s legitimate.

Every device there is in language is there to be used, if you will. Poets have got to enjoy themselves sometimes, and the twistings and convolutions of words, the inventions and contrivances, are all part of the joy that is part of the painful, voluntary work.

You know, fame is a funny thing, man, especially, you know, actors, musicians, rappers, rock singers, it’s kind of a lifestyle and it’s easy to get caught up in it – you go to bars, you go to clubs, everyone’s doing a certain thing… It’s tough.

There are a lot of self-imposed restrictions by people who somehow believe they have to fall in with a certain military cant. There was always a sense that we had to put things into words that would touch our troops‘ hearts, not just their heads.

Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, are all very good words for the lips.

I would define, in brief, the poetry of words as the rhythmical creation of Beauty.

No one means all he says, and yet very few say all they mean, for words are slippery and thought is viscous.

Words have no power to impress the mind without the exquisite horror of their reality.

A gentleman would be ashamed should his deeds not match his words.

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.

Language is the dress of thought.

Half the world is composed of people who have something to say and can’t, and the other half who have nothing to say and keep on saying it.

This thing that I do with caring about the message in my music, it’s not separate from my work as a commercial artist; they’re totally one and the same. I’m always going to be thinking about what my voice means.

Words are but the signs of ideas.

Words do two major things: They provide food for the mind and create light for understanding and awareness.