Questlove famous quotes

Hip-hop is an instant gratification, winners and losers circle, and often those who are losing give up after three or four, five years.
-- Questlove

#Giving Up #Years #Circles

To be hip-hop is much more than just rapping in the production. It is more in the attitude.
-- Questlove

#Attitude #Rap #Hip Hop

The only mofos in my circle are people that I can learn from.
-- Questlove

#Circles #People

I grew up in somewhat of a war zone in West Philadelphia in 1985, '86. It wasn't as extreme as someone coming in the classroom and just unloading on a class, but I knew to take the scenic route to go to the grocery store to avoid certain elements.
-- Questlove

#War #Class #Philadelphia

Time will tell. Time is always telling. Time never stops telling,
-- Questlove

#Time Will Tell

I cannot keep a girlfriend longer than seven months. I have 12 jobs. I don't have time for my personal life. I'm fully aware that this is the sacrifice.
-- Questlove

#Girlfriend #Jobs #Sacrifice

When you live your life through records, the records are a record of your life.
-- Questlove

#Live Your Life #Records

I hate holidays because it's the quietest; it's the most deafening sound in my apartment.
-- Questlove

#Hate #Holiday #Sound

Hip-hop is so much about character and caricature that people just see you as a character. Very rarely are you flesh and bone to people.
-- Questlove

#Character #People #Hip Hop

I keep moving through time and time keeps moving through me. And through that process, life takes shape. The question is what shape it is. I'm not the first person to ask that question, or to see how absurd it is to think there's a real answer. Maybe life's a circle...
-- Questlove

#Real #Moving #Thinking

Part of me would just like to relax and have one job that pays me the amount I need to survive. And another part of me wants the creativity that comes out of struggle and frustration and fear. It's a never-ending cycle, which must be how I want it, on some level.
-- Questlove

#Jobs #Struggle #Creativity

The president is just the coach of a football team. You need the right support, the right stadium, the right players, the right staff. An excellent coach is not going to win games.
-- Questlove

#Football #Team #Winning

I'm a 24-hour tweet machine, I'm a 24-hour blogger. When there's no pressure on me, I can talk and write and lecture with the best of them. But put a deadline on me and I start getting writer's block.
-- Questlove

#Block #Writing #Machines

I believe that the only people who really, truly benefit from any of the policies of Republicans are the wealthy. I'm in that 1 percent tax bracket, but I'm not a man of wealth.
-- Questlove

#Believe #Men #People

My first gig was at Radio City Music Hall when I was 13.
-- Questlove

#Cities #Gigs #Firsts

In the 2000s, I became an artist. I started preserving and educating. I became more obsessed with making iPod playlists for people.
-- Questlove

#Artist #Ipods #People

Hip-hop is such a disposable art form from a business standpoint. It never treats its artists as art; it never treats its product as art.
-- Questlove

#Art #Hip Hop #Hips

During the 2008 election, I made clear to the Obama campaign that I don't think it's wise for me to force my personal political agenda on anyone.
-- Questlove

#Wise #Thinking #Political

I have a lot of those 'Forrest Gump,' I-was-there moments.
-- Questlove

#Moments #Forrest Gump

I do secret stand-up shows around New York. I announce and tweet this to nobody - I get onstage and I do a quick five minutes.
-- Questlove

#New York #Secret #Tweet

My parents were really strict about me not watching cartoons.
-- Questlove

#Parent #Cartoon #Strict

In terms of being a 'sneakerhead,' there was one point where I was obsessively following every sneaker blog. That's the beauty of Twitter: To get the heads up on what's coming out.
-- Questlove

#Sneakers #Coming Out #Term

I think all of this—The Roots and DJing included—was meant to prepare me for The Tonight Show.
-- Questlove

#Thinking #Roots #Tonight

I've come to the conclusion that the average person can do about four things a day, like four real things a day.
-- Questlove

#Real #Average #Four

Classical music requires an immense amount of concentration, and I don't know if I would've been that committed to that particular life.
-- Questlove

#Classical Music #Concentration #Committed

Highlight reels are about that one person. After a barrage of highlight reels, you get the sense that you can do it without a team. But music thrived the most when groups were involved. People lose sight of that - that community makes the world run.
-- Questlove

#Running #Team #Sight

And even though people like to furrow their brow like they suspect you're not being honest about yourself, the truth is that they worry that you're not serving their idea of you.
-- Questlove

#Ideas #Worry #People

How do you plan a rebirth? I'm not sure you do. You just stand in the darkness until you can't endure it any long, and then you move forward until you're standing in the light.
-- Questlove

#Moving #Light #Long

Every time a new record started, people exhaled with pleasure, or their bodies moved automatically. I really started getting high off of the euphoric exclamations. Every record I put on was like a baptism.
-- Questlove

#People #Baptism #Records

It's a funny word, persistence. It means not giving up, but it also means just passing on through time.
-- Questlove

#Giving Up #Mean #Persistence

Switching off perfection switched on the human quality
-- Questlove

#Perfection #Quality #Switching

Resistance here doesn't mean revolution. It doesn't mean storming the barricades. Resistance means using art for the things that it does best, which is to create human portraits and communicate ideas and forge a climate where people of different races or classes are known to you because they make themselves known. In the simplest terms, art humanizes. It opens the circuit of empathy. And once that process happens, it's that much harder to think of people as part of a policy or a statistic. Art reverses the alienation that can creep into society.
-- Questlove

#Art #Mean #Thinking

Meaninglessness takes hold because meaninglessness is addictive,
-- Questlove

#Meaninglessness

All we sell is the Greatest feeling on Earth
-- Questlove

#Feelings #Earth

Music has the power to stop time. But music also keeps time,
-- Questlove

#Stop Time

I don't have friends, and it's hard for me to make new friends. Right now, the people that are in my life are the people that I work with.
-- Questlove

#People #New Friends

I think the music comes first, then comes the fashion, and thus, the lifestyle. I believe it starts with music, and then the person delivering it delivers the lifestyle, the fashion. Madonna is a great example of that.
-- Questlove

#Fashion #Believe #Thinking

I prefer to unwind by DJing. I learned that from Mike D from the Beastie Boys. After a show, he would DJ. Once I saw that, I wanted to do that. And now DJing is like my lifeline. I love the power it represents.
-- Questlove

#Boys #Saws #Unwind

Funk never dies. It is eternal. It just smells a little different from time to time.
-- Questlove

#Smell #Different #Littles