Saul Williams Quotes

I used to have weird practices in crowded used-book stores in New York where I'd go in and just stomp my foot and see what fell from the shelf. And of course, because it's an unexpected encounter, there's always some magic that comes from it.

I've always been inspired by a lot of work coming out of the UK

only through new words might new worlds be called into order

she kissed as if she, alone, could forge the signature of the sun

I have offered myself to the inkwell of the wordsmith that I might be shaped into new terms of being.

They say that I am a poet I wonder what they would say if they saw me from the inside I bottle emotions and place them into the sea for others to unbottle on distant shores I am unsure as to whether they ever reach and for that matter as to whether I ever get my point across or my love

i laced my shoes with sorrow and walked a weary road dead end streets don't come undone with double knots wing tipped shoes that walk on air through vacant lots

There's so much to be found in literature, especially if you don't have the money to travel or the means to get out of your neighborhood or get off work.

Have you ever lost yourself in a kiss? I mean pure psychedelic inebriation. Not just lustful petting but transcendental metamorphosis when you became aware that the greatness of this being was breathing into you. Licking the sides and corners of your mouth, like sealing a thousand fleshy envelopes filled with the essence of your passionate being and then opened by the same mouth and delivered back to you, over and over again - the first kiss of the rest of your life.

There is nothing more negligent than attempting to address a problem one finds on a branch than by censoring the leaves.

Why shouldn't rap be esoteric, able to take in current events, history and criticism? I guess it's this old idea of containment - that rappers, because they're black, can't and shouldn't aspire to look outside the ghetto for influence.

Talk to strangers when the family fails and friends lead you astray when Buddha laughs and Jesus weeps and it turns out God is gay. 'Cause angels and messiahs love can come in many forms: in the hallways of your projects, or the fat girl in your dorm, and when you finally take the time to see what they’re about perhaps you find them lonely or their wisdom trips you out.

When I wake up in the morning, the first things that I see are the clouds. They're right there. I look out my window now and there's always, always a black bird of some sort on the ledge there. Usually I wake up and look at the birds.

Art itself is underserved when we don't realize the power of it.

she stuck a bookmark in my heart and walked away

i am like a survivor of the flood walking through the streets drenched with God surprised that all of the drowned victims are still walking and talking

If not then you must be trying to hear us and in such cases we cannot be heard. We remain in the darkness, unseen. In the center of unpeeled bananas, we exist. Uncolored by perception. Clothed to the naked eye. Five senses cannot sense the fact of our existence. And that's the only fact. In fact, there are no facts.

You change the beat up, you might change the way people dance to the music. If you change the way they move, maybe they'll think about it differently.

When I look at certain aspects of popular culture - not everything because I like a lot of things - sometimes my heart breaks a little bit, just a little bit. I begin to ponder what happened to this generation, I don't know.

You can travel through literature, and you can expand your mind through literature. It's so cheap to buy that kind of ticket.

I think that good writing is based on good reading. Maybe it's not about writing today, maybe it's about reading today. Maybe it's about finding the sort of book you would never read.

I can't say that I always want to get out of bed, you know.

I think everything has its place. So if the ideas or the fluidity isn't coming in writing, maybe it's related to ingestions.

I was fed by the music I listened to as a kid. Hip-hop fed me psychologically, spiritually, politically. I learned from that music.

There is no music more powerful than hip-hop. No other music so purely demands an instant affirmative on such a global scale. When the beat drops, people nod their heads, “yes,” in the same way that they would in conversation with a loved one, a parent, professor, or minister.

Hip-hop is too young to put a definition on it

There is a lot of fun to be had when you try and fit as many words as you can within a three-minute song, but there is also a lot of fun in trying to get that message across in three words, or better yet when the music can overpower the words and convey something really pure and perfect that affects our psycho-emotional space.

What's wrong with hip-hop is the system that controls the definition of it. There needs to be more balance on the airwaves.

Jay Z and President Bush have a lot in common, that same brash confidence

The role that theater has placed in enhancing consciousness and moving systems ahead. I think of what South African theater meant for the apartheid movement, for example. I think of what music has meant for so many social movements across time.

pools of blood are not recreational even lifeguards drown when the undertow breaks bread with the underbelly demons disguised as sharks have not put enough thought into their costumes a wiseman stays ashore when pointed fins read like italian subtitles the end is near (...) the beginning

I am hoping for peaceful transition into a new age. Obama has already played a great role in initiating us into that vision. If he were to be harmed in any way, it would spawn the birth of a million Obamas.

When I can feel you breathing into me i, like a stone gargoyle atop some crumbling building, spring to life a resuscitated angel.

The thing I've been talking about with daughter is the idea of - and I'm talking about essentially in America - the possibility of, a lost generation. I've been listening to a lot of music - as a fan, as a critic, as somebody who likes to dance - but I hear, you know, within these songs and half the people I hear, these philosophies encoded and embedded in these songs.

Legislation won't necessarily start a riot. But the right song can make someone pick up a chair.

the greatest Americans have not been born yet they are waiting patiently for the past to die

I'm very excited about the resurgence of vinyl which seems to parallel a growing interest in live performance.

More people than ever are slowly but surely turning their ears toward poetry

Your library teacher would say, "What happens to a generation that doesn't read the Classics?" Me, I'm not your library teacher. But I have some of the same questions and concerns, you know?

the anchor man thrown overboard has simply rooted us in history's repeating cycle

I've never believed it's really so important that you conform to the ways of the system in order to beat the system. I think that the system follows a great deal.

I feel that people need to be jolted out of their comfort zones.

The only reason I've been so critical of hip-hop is because I've always been aware of the effect that it has, and the reflection that it gives of the African-American community.

What I'm aiming to do within hip-hop is to point out that the music itself is powerful; it reaches so many people.

Fax me a fact, and I'll telegram a hologram.

Half of the popcorn sh-t that's out there, we know it's popcorn. But we're like, "It's my guilty pleasure." I feel like we have more guilty pleasure than actual f - kin' pleasure.

A lie preserved in stained glass doesn't make it more true.

Punk rock meditation, that's what keeps it going. That's how I let go, you know. It's exactly what I do, I blast it and run around crazy banging my head on the wall.