Raekwon Quotes

All we ever wanted was for Tupac to have the opportunity to tell his story.

I think from my earliest childhood, I liked to tell stories, put on plays and write things. It's funny to think of it as an "artistic bug" because I didn't necessarily want to be an artist. It's just who I was and how I communicate.

I completely believe that - literature for me is a way of life. That's probably true of all writers or all artists. I think in the end this kind of activity absorbs one in such a way that it becomes one's way of life.

We're artists too, but we do a good job hiding it, don't we?

I think an artist can fit under a few different categories depending on how much you explore your creativity. It can vary from artist to artist from musician to performer to vocalist. I thrive on creativity. So in the long run I want to be an all around entertainer.

Artists are on the average less happy than men of science.

I don't think the 'what' distinguishes a good novel from a bad one but rather the 'how.'

Artists are the traditional interpreters of dreams and nightmares.

Without poets, without artists... everything would fall apart into chaos. There would be no more seasons, no more civilizations, no more thought, no more humanity, no more life even; and impotent darkness would reign forever. Poets and artists together determine the features of their age, and the future meekly conforms to their edit.

It's a fun thing to do, to put yourself in the service of something if you think you can add an interpretation. It's no different than any other storytelling.

I think that's why I keep being drawn back to television, because I think it's one of the most creative outlets.

A friend of mine who writes history books said to me that he thought that the two creatures most to be pitied were the spider and the novelist - their lives hanging by a thread spun out of their own guts. But in some ways I think writers of fiction are the creatures most to be envied, because who else besides the spider is allowed to take that fragile thread and weave it into a pattern? What a gift of grace to be able to take the chaos from within and from it to create some semblance of order.

Artists are better at finding a way to kill their time.

I think perhaps I've learned to be myself. I have a theory that all artists who would be important - painters and writers - must learn to be themselves. It takes a very long time.

I think that people have been claiming hip-hop as being dead since the moment it started. I think there are people - and I can be included in that category sometimes - that get frustrated feeling like maybe the industry has handcuffed itself, or trained its artists to do or think about music in a way that classically hasn't led to the greatest records in hip-hop.

I think the best thing I learned from drawing comics is that it's a great exercise in concision.

The thing about hip-hop is they always want to classify you as one particular artist, but hip-hop is about going outside the box and expressing yourself however you want to.

It is my opinion that the 21st century will be the century of play, and the heteroglossic activity of artists in the 20th century has been the forecast.

Artists themselves are neurotic and fearful people, and you can look at their work and figure out what they're scared of.

Today's Baudelaires are hip-hop artists.

There have been a lot of hip-hop artists who have made a difference to people's lives, spreading the message of the struggle and representing for those who have overcome adversity.

I think hard times are coming. We will need writers who can remember freedom. Poets, visionaries, the realists of a larger reality.

There's the shared imagery between hip-hop and comics, with some producers and emcees taking on super hero personas.

We wouldn't be artists, writers, painters, musicians, if we weren't sensitive.

I think it's bad for human beings to be artists. It's awful. You want to do something but you're constantly trying to decide what you want to do. Let's just say it's no place like Hawaii.