“No one’s promised anything. You could have the biggest record on radio and sell no records.”

Once you make it to your point of making it, you’ll appreciate the struggle.

Somebody like me who knows it firsthand and could relate… I had a best friend killed, plenty other friends killed. I been through it. I seen it.

Stillmatic’ is the rebirth of ‘Illmatic,’ my first debut album to come out in 1994. ‘Stillmatic’ is me coming full circle in my career and with everything, and just bringing pure hip-hop back.

I don’t have time for the news clippings. I got my own mission.

I love the art world, I love art galleries, I love what it means – I love art.

Hip-hop is really standoffish. It’s really competitive and it’s really about who’s number one all the time. Sometimes it gets out of hand.

When you’re a teenager, you want to meet a lot of girls – you want to get the most girls.

Marley is someone before his time, man. He’s – he’s almost – he’s like a deity, like almost, you know what I mean?

I’m smiling. Those things are really not bad enough to put me in a slump. I’m smiling with the opportunity to wake up every morning.

Hip-hop is bigger than the South; hip-hop is bigger than New York.

When you have a daughter, you want to protect her from the things that I’ve seen out there, you know, the things that’s out there that ain’t good for her. It’s a crazy world we live in.

I think if I heard someone else talking about their life, describing all the problems I’ve had, they’d look like they were through. Done. But there’s something about me.

GaGa is one of my favourites. Her voice is incredible and she’s fearless and she’s ahead of the game. She’s ahead of the entire game, and I admire that.

I’m just little me, an American who wants to see his country do better.

Every time I get in the studio, I feel like I wanna have some fun.

The flaws, the mistakes I make – that’s the real me.

They didn’t really have a choice because I got jobs acting before anyone could really say anything.

I have no idea who the characters are, later, their personalities take over anything I might want to do.

There’s no need to explain anything at length. Let go of love and hate and let things be. That’s all that I do in my own practice.

If I were to write anything at all, it would turn out to be nothing but talk about movies. In other words, take ‘myself,’ subtract ‘movies,’ and the result is ‘zero.’

By not asking too much, you can believe in almost anything..like..a starry night in the mountains, or even the existence of fate.

Anything you make has its own wavelength and its own sound. It’s like a tuning fork, until the things that resonate are correct for it.

Cease to sin, because you will not meet Allah with anything [as valuable] as few sins.

I can read people, and if the other person doesn’t want to say anything,