We're all Africans, everyone - black, white, yellow.

I never sleep, cause sleep is the cousin of death.

When I made Illmatic, I was trying to make the perfect album. It comes from the days of Wild Style. I was trying to make you experience my life. I wanted you to look at hip-hop differently. I wanted you to feel that hip-hop was changing and becoming something more real.

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

I'm proud to be an American, no matter what. But Amercian culture is stale, you know wha I'm saying ? We keep regurgitating the same sh*t. And it ain't exciting. I seen it from when I was a kid watching the whole sh*t. The sh*t was exciting to me.

Life is short is what some niggaz said; not if you measure life - by how one lives and what he did.

No idea is original, there's nothing new under the sun, it's never what you do, but how it's done