I be off the slave ships, building pyramids, writing my own hieroglyphs

I am a sinner....who's probably gonna sin again...Lord forgive me!

Brother Kendrick Lamar: he's not a rapper, he's a writer, he's an author. And if you read between the lines, we'll learn how to love one another. But you can't do that, I said you can't do that, without loving yourself first.

My mom's one of 13 siblings, and they all got six kids, and till I was 13 everybody was in Compton.

I'm standing on a field full of landmines doing the moonwalk hoping i blow up in time

Got in the studio at sixteen, [and] that's when I felt like I wanted to make this a career. I had a passion for it.

I went back and studied the game, was a student of the game and worked on my craft and dedicated myself, you know? A lot of my music revolves around me growing up in Compton. I want to tell a different story that's never been told before, of a good kid in a mad city.