“Having grown up far, far away in a small country town in Australia, I was only slightly aware of hip-hop.”

Fitzgerald coined the phrase the ‘Jazz Age,’ and now we’re living in the Hip-Hop Age.

The cold-audition process is not a science, so I ignore that.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself

Everything I make starts very personally.

A life lived in fear is a life half lived.

I do find walking is fundamental to my creative process.

My wife is the fact-checker, I’m in the story telling business.

I feel a kinship with anyone who feels that their road, their life or who they really are is not good enough. I really relate to that.

It’s pretty hard to get mugged in Manhattan.

At a very young age I was allowed to go into the cinema and watch adult films.

If Paris is a city of lights, Sydney is the city of fireworks.

The ugly duckling is a misunderstood universal myth. It’s not about turning into a blonde Barbie doll or becoming what you dream of being; it’s about self-revelation, becoming who you are.

Why live life from dream to dream, and dread the day when dreaming ends.

Opera was the cinema of its time, so to bring back that popular appeal, you just need to unleash its visceral immediacy and excitement. Most productions don’t manage that – but when an opera does do it, you never forget it.

Look, I had a passion for comic books growing up.

When I was growing up you would see big American films that really mythologised their landscape, that really showed the vastness and the drama of their country.

I relieve rappers just like Tylenol

So put a quarter in your ass Cuz ya played ya’self

Save your wack rhymes, hold your female. Pass the Old Gold, trash the ale. Cash your food stamps, get the WIC out the mail. Love to eat shrimps, but I never eat snail,

No-frill rappers: you will evaporate, disintegrate, deflate to your fate, as the great will dominate straight to the state Of reignin’, gainin’…So put Kane in That category. Period. End of story.

I have to be perfectly honest: You should have an anniversary to acknowledge the way I work the ebonics.

…in the middle of Little Italy little did we know that we riddled some middleman who didn’t do diddily

And when it comes to gettin nookie, I’m not a rookie… I got girls that make that chick Toni Braxton look like Whoopi.

Player haters be givin’ me harsh looks, But I’m tryin to sell records like Garth Brooks.