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.

In order to fly, all one must do is simply miss the ground.

It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves.

When you’re traveling constantly, every day you become inspired, and it shows in my work, sonically, lyrically, visually. Conversations with women with different accents and stories told in those accents. I like to create characters based on different people I’ve met, and relationships. I like to tell stories loosely based on real-life events.

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

We represent a hustler. I think we represent inspiration. I think we represent, you know, staying down. I think we represent building yourself up from the bootstraps.

Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.

Tupac, Biggie, Jay. Your usual suspects. These were the people that was played in my household.

When words are scarce they are seldom spent in vain.

In art, at a certain level, there is no ‚better than.‘ It’s just about trying to operate for yourself on the most supreme level, artistically, that you can and hoping that people get it. Trusting that, just because of the way people are built and how interconnected we are, greatness will translate and symmetry will be recognised.

A good character is the best tombstone. Those who loved you and were helped by you will remember you when forget-me-nots have withered. Carve your name on hearts, not on marble.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

The purest and most thoughtful minds are those which love colour the most.

I really want a movie made on Sachin Tendulkar’s life. That is something I’m looking forward to. There will be so much emotion to that movie.

Music is the wine which inspires one to new generative processes, and I am Bacchus who presses out this glorious wine for mankind and makes them spiritually drunken.

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.

Pennies do not come from heaven. They have to be earned here on earth.

I intend to inspire people with my story: motivate young people that grew up like myself, or even not like myself. Just, you know, go through the human experience.

In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing.

I always try to put a seed of hope into people’s hearts. I’m not there to teach them doctrine necessarily, but to let them know that God is a good God, and has a plan for their lives. Hopefully, that will restore their faith, or draw them into faith.

O, had I but followed the arts!

Work is love made visible. And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

Courage is contagious. When a brave man takes a stand, the spines of others are often stiffened.

Sometimes I’ve called writing a disease. If so, I’m glad that it caught me.

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

Art raises its head where creeds relax.

No one can resist the idea of a crippled genius.

I became interested in folk music because I had to make it somehow.

A hero is no braver than an ordinary man, but he is brave five minutes longer.

Everything is my demon muse. I have a muse which whispers in my ear and says, ‚Do this, do that,‘ but it’s my demon who provokes me.

Cast away your sloth, your lethargy, your coldness, or whatever interferes with your chaste and pure love for Christ, your soul’s husband. Make Him the source, the center, and the circumference of all your soul’s range of delight.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

I experience a period of frightening clarity in those moments when nature is so beautiful. I am no longer sure of myself, and the paintings appear as in a dream.

The influence of ‚Hidden Fortress‘ comes up a lot because it was printed in a book once. The truth is, the only thing I was inspired by was the fact that it’s told from the point of view of two peasants, who get mixed up with a samurai and princess and a lot of very high-level people.

The power of imagination makes us infinite.

I modelled my looks on the town tramp.

What I admire most about Hillary is that she never buckles under pressure. She never takes the easy way out. And Hillary Clinton has never quit on anything in her life. And when I think about the kind of president that I want for my girls and all our children, that’s what I want.

To create something you must be something.

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn’t be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

I remember being in Japan when Destiny’s Child put out ‚Independent Women,‘ and women there were saying how proud they were to have their own jobs, their own independent thinking, their own goals. It made me feel so good, and I realized that one of my responsibilities was to inspire women in a deeper way.

The idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

‚Lives‘ is one of those books I should really have written when I was younger. It is the classic childhood, adolescence, breakthrough-into-maturity book. Every beginning writer has that material – and after that, you’re not sure what you can do.

Action may not always bring happiness; but there is no happiness without action.

For me, money is not my definition of success. Inspiring people is a definition of success.

A good model of how to ‚work with the enemy‘ internally is presented by the Dalai Lama, in his endless caretaking of his soul as he confronts the Chinese government that invaded Tibet.

I began revolution with 82 men. If I had to do it again, I do it with 10 or 15 and absolute faith. It does not matter how small you are if you have faith and plan of action.

As a songwriter, you respect and appreciate the writings of other people, and I often get asked, are there songs out there I wish I’d written? Yes. There’s many of them!

Many times, we miss out on God’s best because we give up too soon. We don’t realize how close we are to victory.

If you dream the proper dreams, and share the myths with people, they will want to grow up to be like you.

The bravest person I’ve ever met was a young boy going through massive amounts of treatment for a very rare, complex and unpleasant disease. I last saw him at a Discworld convention, where he chose to take part in a game as an assassin. He died not long afterwards, and I wish I had his fortitude and sense of style.

Muhammad Ali is a legend, a hero of mine.

Fashion is inspired by youth and nostalgia and draws inspiration from the best of the past.

I’m honored that everybody’s inspired off my inspiration.

Always have something beautiful in sight, even if it’s just a daisy in a jelly glass.

Billy Graham is one of my great lifetime heroes. I think he epitomizes the essence of what a Christian leader should be. I have participated in some of his crusades a couple of times in Atlanta. I’ve seen the profound impact he’s had on me personally, and on other people who were not Christians and accepted Christ as Savior.

A lot of my heartbreak songs are inspired by things my sisters are going through, or friends.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

As scientists, we step on the shoulders of science, building on the work that has come before us – aiming to inspire a new generation of young scientists to continue once we are gone.

Life loves the liver of it.