When you have a voice and a platform and you know better, it becomes your moral obligation to support that community. And by extension, you're supporting your family.

A flower that grow in the ghetto know more about survival than the one from fresh meadows.

Skip the religion and politics, head straight to the compassion. Everything else is a distraction.

I ignored your aura but it grabbed me by the hand, like the moon pulled the tide, and the tide pulled the sand.

Do the math: You never settle for less than the whole if you knew the half.

You gotta get back to your essence, Use your gifts and share your presence, Don't count your dollars 'til you count your blessings.

Life without knowledge is death in disguise.

The beautiful thing about hip-hop is it's like an audio collage. You can take any form of music and do it in a hip-hop way and it'll be a hip-hop song. That's the only music you can do that with.

If lyrics sold then truth be told/I'd probably be just as rich and famous as Jay-Z.

I'm at a loss for words. But even my loss is amplified.

You know, there's a lot of activism that doesn't deal with empowerment, and you have to empower yourself in order to be relevant to any type of struggle.

But, you see, it's not what you do that matters really. It's only you.""Me what?""Just you here. Or you in the city. Or you somewhere in the world. I don't know. Just that.

Language is the dress of thoughts.

Sometimes we realize that we are like facebook, people using us for themselves, meeting each other via us, earning via us, taking all credits, even no one talking about us, just using US .

The only free mind is one that, pure of all intimacy with beings or objects, plies its own vacuity.

I only assumed those dresses were costumes, based on the garish nature of the plumage.

I have a hotline to the tabloids. When I get up in the morning, I call the Star, and the last thing at night, I call them. I want them to have the inside track.

You should always go where there is a 'you-shaped' hole in the world.

You don't knit because you are patient. You are patient because you knit

My entire career, in fiction or nonfiction, I have reported and written about people who are not like me.