If I’m the people’s poet, then I ought to be in people’s hands – and, I hope, in their heart.

I write books back to back, and I work very hard on them.

I believe that in every country the people themselves are more peaceably and liberally inclined than their governments.

I’ve loved reading all my life.

I always wrote poetry and stuff like that, so putting songs together wasn’t that spectacular.

It may be that the most striking thing about members of my literary generation in retrospect will be that we were allowed to say absolutely anything without fear of punishment.

Public sentiment is everything. With public sentiment, nothing can fail. Without it, nothing can succeed.

No pressure, no diamonds.

People want to feel hopeful.

Energy, like the biblical grain of the mustard-seed, will remove mountains.

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

And were an epitaph to be my story I’d have a short one ready for my own. I would have written of me on my stone: I had a lover’s quarrel with the world.

Life is a song to me.

How I love David Bowie.

Great hearts steadily send forth the secret forces that incessantly draw great events.

I like not fair terms and a villain’s mind.

Sometimes I write about my own life. And sometimes I write about situations I see my friends going through. Sometimes I write about a scene I saw in a movie. I take inspiration from all different places.

From the moment I started writing raps, I was always aware of the pressure. I always wanted to live up to how huge Snoop got, how huge Dre got, how huge Pac got. I was always aware.

I like sitting and writing with my buddies.

Your feelings so are important to write down, to capture, and to remember because today you’re heartbroken, but tomorrow you’ll be in love again.

Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.

Teach not thy lip such scorn, for it was made For kissing, lady, not for such contempt.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.

I’m a writer, and I will write what I want to write.

Bad food is made without pride, by cooks who have no pride, and no love. Bad food is made by chefs who are indifferent, or who are trying to be everything to everybody, who are trying to please everyone… Bad food is fake food… food that shows fear and lack of confidence in people’s ability to discern or to make decisions about their lives.

Never lose a holy curiosity.

I am not a consecutive writer.

You see things; and you say ‚Why?‘ But I dream things that never were; and I say ‚Why not?‘

June Jordan, who died of cancer in 2002, was a brilliant, fierce, radical, and frequently furious poet. We were friends for thirty years. Not once in that time did she step back from what was transpiring politically and morally in the world. She spoke up, and led her students, whom she adored, to do the same.

So that’s the dissenter’s hope: that they are writing not for today but for tomorrow.

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

Snoop ain’t never cosigned me, but I know everybody is like, ‚That’s the next Snoop.‘ Nah, I’m Nipsey, and I got to work to define myself.

There is a single light of science, and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.

The day when I am no more than a writer I shall cease to be a writer.

Pound’s crazy. All poets are. They have to be. You don’t put a poet like Pound in the loony bin.

People of Berlin – people of the world – this is our moment. This is our time.

When I do have free time, I spend it with friends, or I spend it at home writing or making something.

Helped are those who create anything at all, for they shall relive the thrill of their own conception and realize a partnership in the creation of the Universe that keeps them responsible and cheerful.

There’s no formula.

Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.

Death most resembles a prophet who is without honor in his own land or a poet who is a stranger among his people.

My songs are the door to every dream I’ve ever had and every success I’ve ever achieved.

The inquiry constantly is what will please, not what will benefit the people. In such a government there can be nothing but temporary expedient, fickleness, and folly.

What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to the soul.

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.

I don’t think there’s such a thing as autobiographical fiction. If I say it happened, it happened, even if only in my mind.

I read poetry to save time.

I don’t set out to write about spirituality; I am free to do something different every time.

This is no time for ease and comfort. It is time to dare and endure.

Ambition is the germ from which all growth of nobleness proceeds.

Music is not math. It’s science. You keep mixing the stuff up until it blows up on you, or it becomes this incredible potion.

I do love being in my studio. Especially at night.

Practically everybody in New York has half a mind to write a book, and does.

If I haven’t any talent for writing books or newspaper articles, well, then I can always write for myself.

Stand a little less between me and the sun.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

A good thing to remember is somebody’s got it a lot worse than we do.

There are old heads in the world who cannot help me by their example or advice to live worthily and satisfactorily to myself; but I believe that it is in my power to elevate myself this very hour above the common level of my life.

When I hear music, I fear no danger. I am invulnerable. I see no foe. I am related to the earliest times, and to the latest.

Poetry is a deal of joy and pain and wonder, with a dash of the dictionary.

My mother says I was writing before I was crawling. I wrote in the dirt with a twig.