You can’t imagine parlor ballads drifting out of high-rise multi-towered buildings. That kind of music existed in a more timeless state of life.

The first rap CD that I had, it was so different for me. The energy, the wordplay, all that caught my attention, and I liked it.

I always had a knack for improvisation. I can write down the notes I play, but never really had a proper academic musical background. I suppose I’m blessed and cursed by the fact I have that freedom.

I’m really looking forward to seeing what life brings to me.

I’m half living my life between reality and fantasy at all times. It’s best not to ask questions and just enjoy.

And no, we don’t know where it will lead. We just know there’s something much bigger than any of us here.

Factoring in millions of people when I’m writing a song is not a good idea. I don’t ever do it.

The lyrics are constructed as empirically as the music. I don’t set out to say anything very important.

Songs for me are like a message in a bottle. You send them out to the world, and maybe the person who you feel that way about will hear about it someday.

Yes, the Bible should be taught in our schools because it is necessary to understand the Bible if we are to truly understand our own culture and how it came to be. The Bible has influenced every part of western culture from our art, music, and history, to our sense of fairness, charity, and business.

You gotta make sure the listener is listening to you, so if you put it into a song, often times, if the song is striking enough, then you can really deliver the story most effectively while keeping the ear of the listener the whole time.

For time is the longest distance between two places.

My music is influenced by L.A. culture.

I still derive immense pleasure from remembering how many hod-carrying brickies were encouraged to put on lurex tights and mince up and down the high street, having been assured by know-it-alls like me that a smidgen of blusher really attracted the birds.

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

People are used to music that justifies street culture but something that’s not touched on is why these kids act the way they act, live the way they live.

My style influences my music and everything around me.

I hate talking about music, to tell you the truth.

I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.

Although the life of a person is in a land full of thorns and weeds, there is always a space in which the good seed can grow. You have to trust God.

To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.

When we are born we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.

Life is a matter of really tough choices.

Life must be lived and curiosity kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.

What do you want a meaning for? Life is a desire, not a meaning.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

To be renewed is everything. What more could one ask for than to have one’s youth back again?

I write my own songs. I made my own videos. I pick my producers. Nothing goes out without my permission. It’s all authentic.

Sonnymoon and Quadrants are a couple of bands that really inspire me in terms of the melodics of things and certain tones and just what feels good. It takes me back to the type of music that I grew up on in my household. We played a lot of gangsta rap, but we also played a lot of oldies, and I think that mix is part of what inspires my sound.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.

Whenever I write a novel, music just sort of naturally slips in (much like cats do, I suppose).

If you have the opportunity to play this game of life you need to appreciate every moment. A lot of people don’t appreciate the moment until it’s passed.

They say you can rap about anything except for Jesus, that means guns, sex, lies, video tapes, but if I talk about God my record won’t get played Huh?

If you lose a big fight, it will worry you all of your life. It will plague you – until you get your revenge.

One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.

Your life is like a play with several acts. Some of the characters who enter have short roles to play, others, much larger. Some are villains and others are good guys. But all of them are necessary; otherwise, they wouldn’t be in the play. Embrace them all, and move on to the next act.

Death to me means nothing as long as I can die fast.

When I was in high school, there were these British blues-rock-type bands with really good guitar players that would jam on one song for half an hour. And as much as I was amazed by some of those guitar players, seeing them prompted me to make a note that that’s not something I could do.

Music is like film to me.

Existence really is an imperfect tense that never becomes a present.

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.

Your joy comes from how you think, the choices that we make in life.

Life imitates art far more than art imitates Life.

When you arise in the morning, think of what a precious privilege it is to be alive – to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love.

Life is better than death, I believe, if only because it is less boring, and because it has fresh peaches in it.

If being an egomaniac means I believe in what I do and in my art or music, then in that respect you can call me that… I believe in what I do, and I’ll say it.

I would like to do a duet with Taylor Hanson, because I have loved Hanson since I was 8.

Good is positive. Evil is merely privative, not absolute: it is like cold, which is the privation of heat. All evil is so much death or nonentity. Benevolence is absolute and real. So much benevolence as a man hath, so much life hath he.

There is a very fine line between loving life and being greedy for it.

The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn’t really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: he wasn’t going to compose Beethoven’s Fifth.

Everybody is going to have their critics. It’s easy to get discouraged in life.

It’s important to love in hip hop.

If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

My songs always sound a lot better in person than they do on the record.

Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, ‚What are you doing for others?‘

I never went to rock concerts when I was a kid. I didn’t see any rock & roll bands.

When you have nobody you can make a cup of tea for, when nobody needs you, that’s when I think life is over.

Life is divided into the horrible and the miserable.

I never intended for the Monster Ball to be a religious experience, it just became one.

For this generation, ours, life is nuclear survival, liberty is human rights, the pursuit of happiness is a planet whose resources are devoted to the physical and spiritual nourishment of its inhabitants.