What my character is or how many jails I have lounged in, or wards or walls or wassails, how many lonely-heart poetry readings I have dodged, is beside the point. A man’s soul or lack of it will be evident with what he can carve upon a white sheet of paper.

One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way.

I don’t see myself as a pop artist. Like, when you hear ‚pop,‘ you’re like, ‚Oh, bubblegum, jumpy little girly stuff,‘ and I feel like, ‚Uh-uh. That’s not me.‘

To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse then starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body.

There’s an ecstatic side to writing. It’s like jazz. It just has a life.

It’s all make believe, isn’t it?

I don’t believe in ‚thinking‘ old. Although I’ve transitioned through many bodies – a baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, mid-life and older adult – my spirit is unchanged. I support my body with exercise, my mind with reading and writing, and my spirit with the knowing that I am part of the Divine source of all life.

Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The key word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.

No one tells me what to do with my music. Real. My mom doesn’t tell what to say, how is someone else going to?

It’s much more fun to play something you’re nothing like than what you are… It’s much easier to hide yourself in a character.

I had to prove you could be a new kind of black man. I had to show the world.

I had this dream to become a writer since I was a teenager.

He who is not a good servant will not be a good master.

I don’t want to make niche-oriented music.

Why do I like to write short stories? Well, I certainly didn’t intend to. I was going to write a novel. And still! I still come up with ideas for novels. And I even start novels. But something happens to them. They break up. I look at what I really want to do with the material, and it never turns out to be a novel.

The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be… The nation and the world are in dire need of creative extremists.

I no longer feel attracted to the well-made novel. I want to write the story that will zero in and give you intense, but not connected, moments of experience. I guess that’s the way I see life. People remake themselves bit by bit and do things they don’t understand.

At Cornell University, my professor of European literature, Vladimir Nabokov, changed the way I read and the way I write. Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea.

But I think there are a set of experiences that turn a potential writer into a working writer, and then there are places in your life were you start to recognize what you want to do.

Nothing goes by luck in composition. It allows of no tricks. The best you can write will be the best you are.

I spent three days a week for 10 years educating myself in the public library, and it’s better than college. People should educate themselves – you can get a complete education for no money. At the end of 10 years, I had read every book in the library and I’d written a thousand stories.

The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively.

I feel like my music has become a lot of things. It’s hard to label the evolution, but I like there to be an evolution. I just like to paint with all different kinds of colors.

Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves.

The mind of a 19-year-old is very different from the mind of a 26-year-old. You grow. You get into better relationships. You experience more, meet more people, better people. But when you’re in a dark hole at an earlier point in your life – you write about the mindset you’re in at that moment.

Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.

The power of our thoughts may never be measured or appreciated, but it became obvious to me as a young boy that there was value and power in being aware of my thoughts and how I expressed myself.

If you want to make beautiful music, you must play the black and the white notes together.

My passion is bringing storylines around and constructing a full body of work rather than just a 16-bar verse.

I’ve written some great things. That’s a gift, but there’s consequences. Yeah, you get this great work, but you suffer. You really, really suffer.

I think some people would love to be able to make the clothes I make – and of course, I do influence them, but they keep simplifying, and minimalism doesn’t quite work.

When you seek the presence of your creative Spirit and are filled with passion about virtually everything you undertake, you’ll successfully remove the roadblocks from your life and enjoy the active presence of Spirit.

Reduce your plan to writing. The moment you complete this, you will have definitely given concrete form to the intangible desire.

Good ideas are free – or at least they should be.

It’s lack that gives us inspiration. It’s not fullness.

I think writing really helps you heal yourself. I think if you write long enough, you will be a healthy person. That is, if you write what you need to write, as opposed to what will make money, or what will make fame.

I think that’s why I put my energy into making music. That’s how I get my thoughts out, instead of being crazy all the time.

I’ve had mixtapes that have been better than albums I’ve heard from other artists. I take my time; I put my heart into it.

Without this playing with fantasy no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.

There’s no such thing as perfect writing, just like there’s no such thing as perfect despair.

I write because writing is something that I have to do. And it doesn’t matter whether people like it or not. When I write, I feel the pressure and anxiety that come with taking an empty piece of paper and trying to fill it with something from your own consciousness.

We all want to be famous people, and the moment we want to be something we are no longer free.

Consistency is the last refuge of the unimaginative.

An artist needn’t be a clergyman or a churchwarden, but he certainly must have a warm heart for his fellow men.

I live halfway between reality and theater at all times. And I was born this way.

I tweet in the morning and the evening. To write 12 hours a day, there is a moment when you’re really tired. It’s my relaxing time.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy.

You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.

I never desired to please the rabble. What pleased them, I did not learn; and what I knew was far removed from their understanding.

I feel like in my music I can be a rebel. I can say things I wouldn’t say in real life.

You see something, then it clicks with something else, and it will make a story. But you never know when it’s going to happen.

Most poets are young simply because they have not been caught up. Show me an old poet, and I’ll show you, more often than not, either a madman or a master… it’s when you begin to lie to yourself in a poem in order simply to make a poem that you fail. That is why I do not rework poems.

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

I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

I’m terrified of therapy because I don’t want it to mess with my creativity.

You’re not going to say anything about me that I’m not going to say about myself. There’s so many things that I think about myself; if someone really wanted to get at me, they could say this and this and this. So I’m going to say it before they can. It’s the best policy for me.

I would get out of school and go straight to my computer to create beats.

The thing about the 600 words, I mean some day, you can do a very, very, very hard day’s work and not write a word, just revising, or you would scribble a few words.

If I’m inspired to make a certain kind of song, I’m going to make that kind of song, no matter if it’s what they know me as or think I am.

Writing and cafes are strongly linked in my brain.

When you have nothing important or interesting to say, don’t let anyone persuade you to say it.