J.I.D Quotes

I've just been writing stuff down as it comes to me. I haven't thought, 'Let me write some major opus here.'

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

I write about what I'm going through.

I use a stream-of-consciousness approach; if you don't censor yourself, you end up with what you're most concerned about, but you haven't filtered it through your conscious mind. Then you craft it.

I'm not a fast, stream-of-consciousness lyricist at all - I know some guys who are, and if there is one skill I wish I had, it's that.

I'm finding that writing poetry is strengthening my songwriting, because you're learning to make a piece of writing work on a page with nothing else. I was also finding within poetry I felt a lot more free to write about very different matters, to write about social issues or things that are going on around me.

My lyrics are generated by various peculiar processes. Very random and similar to automatic writing.

Each day I feel a little differently; some times I try to write something that's fictitious and then there's other times where I try to write something that's true.

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.

Everything I've written is personal - it's the only way I know how to write.

I write poetry anyway and have for years and years. For me, putting fiction and poetry together is like the best of both worlds.

I guess I could say that I pursue questions that interest me in ways that interest me on the page, but that's awfully vague.

Not everybody is a great rapper; not everybody lives for the art of lyricism.

I'm a writer, so whatever gymnastics jump through my head, I write about it.

I can only write a book like 'The Tin Drum' or 'From the Diary of a Snail' at a special period of my life. The books came about because of how I felt and thought at the time.

Poetry is the language we speak in the most terrifying or ecstatic passages of our lives. But the very word poetry scares people. They think of their grade school teachers reciting 'Hiawatha' and they groan.

'Warm Bodies' ended up becoming one of the most personal relatable things I've written.

Making art is different for everyone.

There are bits of me in all my characters.

I want to be a poet and have a chance to explore that and let people know what's really on my mind.

I never sit down and write. I just sorta let things form in my brain.

I think it's nearly impossible to write something fictional without having it be about yourself in some way or another.

A lot of the hip hop artists don't write music. They write words.

Every character a writer creates has some of themselves in it somewhere.

I end up writing about all kinds of things. I never make an attempt to write about anything in particular. I don't have a little list of topics to write about.