Top 95 Quotes & Sayings by Mike D - Page 2

I remember going to the East Village for the first time as a fifteen-year-old and going to Tompkins Square Park. That really seemed like a pretty edgy thing to do.

Every vote matters.

Hopefully everybody in the audience thinks, 'That's cool. I could do that.' I don't like the thought that they say, 'I saw the Beastie Boys last night, and they're mega-stars.' I'm a lot happier when the kids who come backstage or to the hotel try to give us tapes of what they've done instead of just getting an autograph.

We're banned from a whole lot of hotels, and we're running out of hotels we can stay in.

Growing up in New York City and hip-hop are two inseparable things, two things that are totally intertwined in our lives.

I guess when time came to make 'To The 5 Boroughs,' we had something important to say.

I kind of idolized older punk-rock and hip-hop bands, and I was, like, 15 when I started the Beastie Boys. And what business did we having doing that at that age?

If people pay money to see you, they have to cheer. They can't boo, or else they're chumping themselves.

Food was always a focus for us, lyrically.

My parents were very, very good about not separating us as kids from their adult friends. So on any given night, we'd have, like, this kind of freak show - artists and art dealers coming over. And these are the people I feel like I learned from.

When you start rhyming, it's hard to find things that rhyme with Yauch, Horovitz and Diamond.

It's never been our intention to sell millions of albums, but if our message touches that many people, then so be it.

To me, the whole thing with the roots of rap music was when the DJ had to supply all the music for the group with two turntables. And the whole criteria of what that DJ would use had nothing to do with what type of band made a record.

For me, growing up in New York, it started with Elvis Costello and the Clash and then got into louder things like Bad Brains and Stimulators, because those were, like, the local bands. Then I started getting into bands from England like the Slits. I remember seeing Gang of Four at Irving Plaza; that was a really big show for me.

I was going to clubs in Manhattan when I was 14.

Denver and Boulder are good record-buying cities. I don't know why.

I don't think about Yauch in the form of his death. I think about him in the form of his life. He was like my closest older brother. There's just so much that we lived through together.

We do not let our music get used in commercials for commercial products.

New York isn't segregated the way many American cities are, where there are specific ethnic neighborhoods that don't necessarily co-exist, or they co-exist but in a much separate sense.

What a lot of the world missed was just how caring New York became post-9/11.

The amazing thing about music is that however many thousands of records I've got now, I know that there are still thousands more that I haven't even begun to discover.

All the music I listened to in high school that I loved and that moved me wasn't the same music other kids were listening to in school. I got into punk rock and new wave, then dub and hip-hop.

We never set out to be superstars.

Music is more available than ever. It's up to people to figure out. Ultimately, it's up to the business to figure out what the business is, monetizing that.

It's really hard to find a lot of things that rhyme with Michael Diamond.

At the time, I was living pretty close to Ground Zero. I had to grab some necessary equipment, put it in my backpack, and flee the immediate proximity on my bike.

We're doing what we want to do, and that's why the kids respect us.

We just have to be careful of our actions as world citizens.

What would've been the downside of holding bin Laden accountable by our own values of justice by which our country is based on?

If they found a way to make shooting in 240p expensive, it would be trendy.

When you quickly get into motion, a problem becomes an opportunity for growth.

I don't mean to brag, I don't mean to boast, But I'm intercontinental when I eat French toast.

If marijuana kills all my brain cells, then how come I can still hear them all talking to me?

Motion Before Motivation: It means you get started FIRST, then FEEL the Inspiration to keep going.

Even though hip-hop started as a battle format, different artists appeared on each other's records or hung out in the same clubs, supporting each other. That was a profound influence. Also, hip-hop, to me, represents limitless possibility. Hip-hop is always evolving. People say, "Oh, it's a very commercial thing, it's too R&B." But in six months, a record is gonna come out that will completely change that.