Every time a new record started, people exhaled with pleasure, or their bodies moved automatically. I really started getting high off of the euphoric exclamations. Every record I put on was like a baptism.

I don't think crack happened by accident. I'm part conspiracy theorist, because you can't develop something that dangerous and have it not be planned.

I never want to get to that level of poverty where taking a bath has to be a hot-pot experience.

I'm a 24-hour tweet machine, I'm a 24-hour blogger. When there's no pressure on me, I can talk and write and lecture with the best of them. But put a deadline on me and I start getting writer's block.

I do count on a changing of tides. All too often, what could be a critics' darling today becomes tomorrow's target. I don't want to be too blasé about it.

It's easy for me to say, "Oh yeah, that's the self-saboteur move that most artists pull whenever they're afraid."

Jay-Z is a dude that can give you a hundred 'Simpsons' quotes, like, 'What you know about the monorail?'