I was lucky to have read a lot of poetry when I was younger; it helped me to remember a way to write.

I'm not dismissing prostitutes, but a lot has changed. This so-called gentrification, it can never be stopped.

I'm from a middle class family but my father squandered all the money, so I didn't really run around with rich people. I was very judgmental towards a lot of them.

Some people will never be able to get their real self, but that's fine, because their fake self is also part of them.

You can't judge people by their cover.

We're all competent in different ways, we've just got to find a way to push ourselves up more.

Obviously you live life for yourself and have your choice to believe what you want to believe in, but I know that the Bible can be used to appreciate life.

Poetry itself is music. I'm just lucky that I can convert it into music.

That's how I always try to start my thoughts. I write them down first, eventually it turns into a poem, and if I feel like composing something to it, then I do that.

Happiness is overrated and money can't justify it.

When I started singing about my life and what I was going through, I felt more confident. It was my own life, I was being myself, I was telling people what was happening.

I was thinking: Girls get scared way too often. Girls get stupidly scared. I was not scared.Telling myself not to be scared kind of worked.

Don't obey the commandments of obstacles. Resist every opposition schemed to break you down. Wake up!

Saints and martyrs had never interested Maggie so much as sages and poets.

We are always getting ready to live, and never having time enough to live.

They lived and laughed and loved and left.

The impact of black music and black art forms on American culture is really difficult to appreciate.

Do you think there'd be a Givenchy in the hood if it wasn't for that South Park photo?

Sometimes, surely, truth is closer to imagination or to intelligence, to love than to fact? To be accurate is not to be right.

You can drink out of Lincoln's nose. They got the Hard Rock t-shirts. They got Elvis, too.

Each substance of a grief has twenty shadows.