Top 81 Quotes & Sayings by Questlove - Page 2

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

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

When you first start off, you see what other people have and quietly say, "I want that."

I love traveling the States no matter what. I love traveling abroad, going to Japan and Australia. I love it. I never get tired of it.

It's funny, I can see the science in how music is made with other artists, but it's hard for me to dissect my own thing.

I feel like the downfall of any person is the second an artist starts celebrating their work themselves, that becomes problematic. And you know, I don't sit there, I don't bask in the awards I've won, you know, read my bank statements, I refuse. To me, that's how you start losing the hunger. So for me personally, I just don't celebrate it. I'm happy, right now.

I've always been a lover of hoodies. I'm a guy that travels a lot. I'm a guy that spends a lot of time on a cold air-conditioned tour bus. I'm a guy that likes to watch movies in peace. I'm a guy that likes to travel in the airport in peace.

It was absolutely killing me that I've spent the first 25 years of my life tryin' to avoid bullets. That was always the main concern. Don't go out late. Don't go to any shady neighborhoods. Don't hang in bars alone. Why? Because you wanna avoid bullets. So once I get to 35 then I was like "Woo, okay. Made it." And now there's a new warning. Now it's like strokes; I gotta watch my health.

I never want to get to that level of poverty where taking a bath has to be a hot-pot experience.

What I'm slowly realizing is that I believe that most of us felt that we could relax a little bit after November 2, 2008, because of the progress and the spirit that it took to get Barack Obama in The White House. And what we didn't realize, is that was really the beginning. That was really the beginning of the struggle and not the end of a struggle, to come from colonial times through slavery, through the Jim Crowe Laws, through the civil rights period to The White House as, like a point A/point B journey. Point B of course being the end.

For anyone that's ever had a musical breakthrough in their career, it's always followed by the departure period right after.

After 2001, everyone in the Soulquarians blew up, which wasn't expected. We all got the success, and then everybody froze.

I was born at a very crucial time. I consider 1968 to be the Mason Dixon line between pre- and post-civil rights generation ideas, whereas a lot of people born before '68 they kind of went into that Moses mentality. Like, I'm not going to make it, you know, I don't have any hope.

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.

Jay-Z is a dude that can give you a hundred 'Simpsons' quotes, like, 'What you know about the monorail?'

My theory is that nine times out of ten, if there's a depression, more a social depression than anything, it brings out the best art in black people. The best example is, Reagan and Bush gave us the best years of hiphop.

I do count on a changing of tides. All too often, what could be a critics' darling today becomes tomorrow's target. I don't want to be too blasé about it.

At 25, my idea of success may have been more vain, like, "I'll be good the day that there's $20 million in my account and I have this particular house and the wife and 2.5 kids." But at 40 - and I know it's kind of silly telling you guys this - but as long as my Metacritic rating stays above 80, that's all I care about.

Working with the artist elite can be like banging your head against the wall.

It's easy for me to say, "Oh yeah, that's the self-saboteur move that most artists pull whenever they're afraid."

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.