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.

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

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.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think.

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.

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.

My favorite things in life don’t cost any money. It’s really clear that the most precious resource we all have is time.

Sometimes I feel like rap music is almost the key to stopping racism.

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!

Our words will either bring life and victory or death and destruction. If we want to be happy, we have to be serious about speaking words of life that line up with God’s Word.

Before I speak, I have something important to say.

We are tired of aristocratic explanations in Harvard words.

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.

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.

Words are cheap. The biggest thing you can say is ‚elephant‘.

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.

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

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

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

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.

I think the message has already been sent to Hollywood, which is that this kid’s a hard worker, he’s talented, and people are coming out to see him. And when you have box-office results, Hollywood treats you different. Hollywood stands up.

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

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.

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

When ideas fail, words come in very handy.

Every once in a while, you let a word or phrase out and you want to catch it and bring it back. You can’t do that. It’s gone, gone forever.

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.

When you’re a little kid, you don’t see color, and the fact that my friends were black never crossed my mind. It never became an issue until I was a teenager and started trying to rap.

Music fills in for words a lot of the time when people don’t know what to say, and I think music can be more eloquent than words.

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

Mathematics takes us into the region of absolute necessity, to which not only the actual word, but every possible word, must conform.

Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.

Suit the action to the word, the word to the action.

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.

A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of friends.

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

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

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

A letter does not blush.

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.

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.

All our words from loose using have lost their edge.

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

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.

You can stroke people with words.

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

I guess every single word I’ve ever said is going to be dissected now.

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

Words are but the signs of ideas.

What I see, what I went through, what a friend of mine may have went through, whatever – I rap about it.

My life is my message.

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.

He who does not understand your silence will probably not understand your words.

It’s funny because I’ve made a living off of words, but words get in the way of what you really want to say.

Language is the dress of thought.

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

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

I just feel like, with rappers, there’s so much complacency. It’s like, ‚Oh, I’m a rapper. I’m successful. I make money. That’s all that matters.‘ But there’s a lot of stuff going on in the world. Whether or not you’re aware of it, it’s happening.

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

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.