As an artist, as a brand, as a rapper, as a musician, you know you got a window and a lot of people, even an athlete; they don’t have no exit strategy. It’s just living in the false reality that it’s going to be like this forever.

If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.

Not a lot of people or pros in this game know how to train correctly. That’s why they don’t have a long career. Their body gets banged up. They get into a rhythm of heavy sparring and heavy work, but through that, they’re limiting movement.

David Beckham has never impressed me.

I treated it like every day was my last day with a basketball.

You need to think outside the box. You need to think differently if you want to sustain what, for me, is my peak performance: the very best that I can achieve as an athlete every day.

Every man, and for stronger reasons, every artist, wants to be recognized. So do I.

My paintings have gotten to be pretty popular and I’ve taken a little bit more interest in painting the last few years. In fact, my novel that I wrote not too long ago, ‚The Hornet’s Nest,‘ I painted the cover picture for it and I do a good bit of painting now.

That’s what you live for as a sportsman. You have to put up a fight.

My mother encouraged me to be artistic. It was written in a contract at an early age that I would be an artist.

An artist has no home in Europe except in Paris.

An artist or a creative person of any kind goes about their work because it’s their path, it’s what excites them, it’s what aligns their soul with who they truly are, who they showed up to be.

A solution built by an artist serves the artist more than the solution the capitalist comes up with.

I’m a trained fine artist. I went to art school from the time I was 5 years old. I was, like, a prodigy out of Chicago. I’d been in national competitions from the age of 14.

I will make action movies, I think, for a few more years, another five years.

Every album, I make big records. I’m going to always make an anthem. That’s what I do.

I never think about myself as an artist working in this time. I think about it in macro.

Every artist preserves deep within him a single source from which, throughout his lifetime, he draws what he is, and what he says. When the source dries up, the work withers and crumbles.

I love Wiz Khalifa.

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.

I subscribe to the myth that an artist’s creativity comes from torment. Once that’s fixed, what do you draw on?

I get a little bit emotional during a game!

They used to call me ‚Touchdown T.‘ I remember in high school, we had homecoming, and I got in front of the pep rally, and I told them, ‚I’m going to run for three touchdowns.‘ I ran for three touchdowns, kicked the extra point, and took myself out the game.

Every artist was first an amateur.

I never thought a career as a musician was possible.

I think that every artist – or anybody that’s in business – could benefit from a direct-to-consumer strategy, so I think that that applies to us as artists and content creators, too.

Performing is a thing in itself, a distinct skill, different from making recordings. And for those who can do it, it’s a way to make a living.

I used to pray that God would make me a great athlete, and He never did.

I just love working with Eminem. He’s just one of my favorite rappers, and his lyrics – he’s a true poet, and I enjoy that about him.

The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.

People still think of me as a cartoonist, but the only thing I lift a pen or pencil for these days is to sign a contract, a check, or an autograph.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

All I do is make music.

I didn’t die young. So I am very lucky. There are other artists and people that didn’t survive certain things… people can imagine that I did the most dangerous, and I did the worst… for many reasons, I shouldn’t be here.

I’m not a very creative person, you know? I’m not really an art person. I’m not a great reader or writer or artist or musician.

Well I think any author or musician is anxious to have legitimate sales of their products, partly so they’re rewarded for their success, partly so they can go on and do new things.

I’m already the face of the UFC, plus the face of boxing, WWE, and Hollywood.

I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination.

I don’t really have a gimmick or a ‚thing.‘ I’m one of the few artists who gets to be himself every day.

Cardi B put a lot of work in.

No great artist ever sees things as they really are. If he did, he would cease to be an artist.

You start to become successful, and everybody starts to drive your money train to the bank, and they’re not thinking anymore about what you want as an artist or if any of that even matters to you. It genuinely upsets people in my life that I don’t care about money, and that’s not my problem.

I do probably 60 concerts a year in the States. And I go out to clubs in the week. I’m doing new stuff all the time.

As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you’re going to be a second-rate artist.

I hope to play until I’m, like, 38 or something, and that’s a lot of years in the game and a lot of travel and a lot of sacrifice on my family’s part.

I have come to believe that a great teacher is a great artist and that there are as few as there are any other great artists. Teaching might even be the greatest of the arts since the medium is the human mind and spirit.

The wage for most musicians is a modest amount, and that includes me some of the time.

I feel like a spoilt rapper. I get to pick and choose everything.

I’ve gotten used to being Frank Ocean.

It’s the philosophies of being an athlete that carry me today.

If you only believe that you’re an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that’s quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.

All my momma’s people were very musical. My grandpa, who was the Pentecostal minister, he was a great musician. He played the fiddle, he played the piano.

I was doing sold-out shows before I got radio play.

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

I really like hip-hop and rap; that’s my main influence. I really wanna be more of a hip-hop artist.

I am an artist, and I have the ability and the free will to choose the way the world will envision me.

A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself.

An agent won’t help you get drafted higher, won’t make you win more games, and won’t make you faster or stronger.

It’s an endless proving of myself, that I really am a musician, that I have something to offer in the room. That women can be musicians, women can be rock stars, women can be more than an objectified idea of a pop star.

Having a simple career as a musician who liked music was good enough for me.

I resent the implication that I’m less of a musician and a worse person for not appreciating certain works.