You can't disengage yourself from that game if you are completely unaware of what people out there might be doing, you're just going to be tripped up, you're going to find yourself continually at a disadvantage.

Many a serious thinker has been produced in prisons, where we have nothing to do but think.

An ecosystem that has the maximum amount of diversity is the richest.

I find the training of the mind that Zen puts people through is by far to me, the most interesting, one of the most interesting disciplines.

One person reads the book, and cannot help telling a friend. That is vastly superior to any kind of advertisement, or clever magazine article. That is also the great power of the internet, where people share their opinions without the annoying screen of the media, and so much of the presence of my books has come from the Internet. It's a new era, a new form of war, and I embrace it.

In the opening stage of most careers any attention is what you want, any attention is good attention, even if it's bad attention.

Jay-Z is more naturally gifted. He didn't depend as much as 50 did on his personal story. Jay-Z has a great story, he came from a pretty rough background. But 50's early success was so much fueled on the story and where he came from. With Jay-Z, I feel he has a more natural gift for language and for music itself. 50 really had to study and work at it much harder.