Music has the power to stop time. But music also keeps time.

The only mofos in my circle are people that I can learn from.

Hip-hop is an instant gratification, winners and losers circle, and often those who are losing give up after three or four, five years.

When you live your life through records, the records are a record of your life.

Time will tell. Time is always telling. Time never stops telling.

Funk never dies. It is eternal. It just smells a little different from time to time.

How do you plan a rebirth? I'm not sure you do. You just stand in the darkness until you can't endure it any long, and then you move forward until you're standing in the light.

Just because the laws were changed doesn't mean that the attitudes have changed.

Hip-hop is so much about character and caricature that people just see you as a character. Very rarely are you flesh and bone to people.

We have to get back to "we." It's important to get back to "we" not just "I."

To be hip-hop is much more than just rapping in the production. It is more in the attitude.

No harm's done to history by making it something someone would want to read.", NEH Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities 2003)

I love being in love.

You know in that moment of Disney when Ariel gets legs for the first time? I felt like that. I was like, 'I've got legs.'

I cannot imagine having a physical relationship with a woman. I have not done that. But I really love women.

Barack Obama has raised tons of money. That is what he means by being green.

Dalton Trumbo was obsessed with justice.

We tend to believe that things are impossible that are very possible.

I go a lot to see young people downtown in little theaters. It's great. If you start somebody's career, it's so exciting.

I always saw myself performing on stage and the girls yelling out my name.

All these young millionaires were anarchists, of course: when a man possesses everything it is the supreme luxury for him to deny society: for in that way he can evade his responsibilities