I live or die for hip-hop and it's a beautiful form but you're a writer first and foremost.

Actually in the moment in which the idea has life, when it's listened to read, engaged with, acted on stage, it gains another dimension, it becomes three dimensional.

The minute you finish a piece of writing it doesn't belong to you, you don't write it any more, it belongs to you, the reader, the listener, the audience. So the less you know about whether or not this is me talking about my life or this is me talking about your life, I think the better. Then it can belong to you and it can live outside of the moment in which it was conceived.

If you ever feel comfortable in what you're producing, you've lost. You're not alive, that's it, it's stagnant water.

Some things, it's very useful to begin without knowing fully where you're going.

It's actually a very liberating thing to have a creative community, which is something that we all kind of desperately search for and find in the ways that we can.

A story comes into your head fully formed, you know exactly the place, the setting, the people. All you've got to do is get it our and written as soon as you possibly can.