Ta-Nehisi Coates Quotes

I can only speak for myself and my own music, because that is what I am most familiar with, and I write about things that I am living or experiencing.

When you write, what's going on in your life shines through in the songs.

I always like to write where I'm at in real life into whatever I'm working on.

A writer is rarely so well inspired as when he talks about himself.

My writing is authentic, and whatever happens in my life is what I write about.

I've always kind of ripped from real life to some degree or at least how I'm feeling in the moment. In fact, maybe that's really it. In anything I've ever written, all the characters sound like me, which I don't think is a bad thing.

I just sit down and the page just comes out and I look at it and the elements that appear on that page have a lot to do with what's going on in my life.

I've always written about things that cause me to feel something.

I write my songs because I've lived them.

I'm self-deprecating, but I'm an artist, too. I have to write new songs to chronicle stuff for myself. I write a song like 'Middle Age' or 'Responsibility' or 'I Just Work Here,' and it's about how bleak life can be. But it's real.

All my songs come from me because I only seem able to write about myself and my experiences.

I'm always inspired to write, and it's usually my own life experiences that inspire me.

To me, writing is a personal thing; I write super-personal, autobiographically.

I'm a firm believer in putting your experiences in your writing, of bleeding into the page.

I write about what happens to me. It's all there. I couldn't do it any other way.

I think, no matter what, when you're writing songs, most people write about the extremes of their experiences.

Everything I've written up to now, hasn't had anything to do with my life really.

All my songs are where I am.

'M Train' is as close to knowing what I'm like as anything. I don't know exactly what the book is about. All and nothing, I suppose.

Most things I go through I have to write about.

A lyric has to mean something to me, something that has happened to me.

Everything in my life affects my writing. There are no separate parts of my life.

As a writer, you rely on whatever makes you up as a person, whether those things are twisted and nasty or otherwise.

I'm not really an autobiographical writer, though I use lots of stuff from my life to make my stories seem real. But when I actually write about myself, I get very confused.

My act has always reflected what's going on in my life.