All Quotes

I just can't get used to the idea of being somebody unreal in people's minds. I can't live my life like that. And it's just anathema to being a writer. It's not healthy. ”

Some people like just sitting down and being taken for a ride. That's a beautiful thing that fiction can do. But it's not the only thing. In television and film, people are ready to accept any kind of jump cut, but the slightest disturbance on the page ruffles their feathers. ”

I like books that don't give you an easy ride. I like the feeling of discomfort. The sense of being implicated. ”

Can't a rapper insist, like other artists, on a fictional reality, in which he is somehow still on the corner, despite occupying the penthouse suite? ”

I can't add. I don't understand basic science. Or anything else. But I can read anything. I've always been able to, and I've always liked to. Even if I didn't understand it, I liked to. ”

I want to write without shame or pride or over-compensation in one direction or another. To write freely. ”

I often worry that my idea of personhood is nostalgic, irrational, inaccurate. ”

I'm always a bit suspicious of writers who have the gift of the gab. ”

The roots of rap are originally ghetto-ised or extremely working class. So when you're an artist who's making something which isn't how its mainstream appearance should be, there's always these strange questions of authenticity and what you have to do to be 'real' as a rapper. ”

Writing is my way of expressing - and thereby eliminating - all the various ways we can be wrong-headed. ”