I didn't ever want to make a rap album. I considered it too limiting. Now that's exactly what I've gone and done

Hip-hop is still cool at a party. But to me, hip-hop has never been strictly a party; it is also there to elevate consciousness.

I think that the heart is a lot like those wonderful fruit, like coconut and mangoes, you know, you have to break the skin, you have to break it open to get to the good part.

she stuck a bookmark in my heart and walked away

If we're gonna progress as a people we are going to realise that, as one of my favourite poets says, the other is a lie. There are no other people. Race is a social construct.

Sometimes our thoughts and feelings are our most prized possessions... and then there are times to let go of your possessions and wander.

I surrendered my beliefs and found myself at the tree of life injecting my story into the veins of leaves only to find that stories like forests are subject to seasons

There is nothing more negligent than attempting to address a problem one finds on a branch than by censoring the leaves.

I think that good writing is based on good reading. Maybe it's not about writing today, maybe it's about reading today. Maybe it's about finding the sort of book you would never read.

I dance for no reason, for reasons you can't dance, Call me an activist of intellectualized circumstance You can't learn my steps until you unlearn your thoughts Spirit, soul, can't be store-bought.

My love is my soul's imagination. How do I love you? Imagine.

Every poem should remind the reader that they are going to die.

Your mind gives birth to an action and, whether you like it or not, it will never let it become orphaned

Ignorance is one of the best defense available. Distraction is a remedy.

If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.

The biggest labor problem is tomorrow.

In science, new ideas are at first completely neglected, later fiercely attacked, and finally regarded as well known.

For most of my life, I was a worrier and an over-thinker. I had pretty bad social anxiety.

I think passion is the magnet to anything.

They thought I was crazy in Mexico when I said, 'I'm going to Hollywood.' Nobody thought I could make it.

I continue to handpick the beetles, mosquitoes feast on me, birds eat the mosquitoes, something else eats the birds, and so on up and down the biotic pyramid.