Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) Quotes
Mos Def is a name that I built and cultivated over the years, it's a name that the streets taught me, a figure of speech that was given to me by the culture and by my environment, and I feel I've done quite a bit with that name. [But] it's time to expand and move on.
Quotes to Explore
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I'm an optimist about other people. I'm not an optimist about myself.
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A hen is only an egg's way of making another egg.
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I didn't expect to have music as my main thing. I always thought I was going to be a lawyer. When I graduated, I was doing really well with my music in Malaysia. I had stable income, and I had really good momentum in the music industry, so I had to make a decision whether to stop that and continue being a lawyer.
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I know I should be Wonder Woman. They need an international actress - a fresh face. They need a woman who's tall, athletic and dark-haired - and an actress who can play the part. That's me. So, I'm coming to L.A. to work hard and meet the industry. And if 'Wonder Woman' comes together, I want it.
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I love working with people and having them bring something to the table that I couldn't. I think one of my favourite artists to work with has been Kucka. She's Australian, too, and it's great working with her because we kind of have a very similar take on music, and we like a lot of the same stuff. We're not super-precious about ideas.
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It's not like I ever sat in my room and said I was going to start a media company and become an editor in chief. It was never my dream. It was something that just happened.
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I never saw myself as being ambitious, I saw myself as being in love with the profession. I'm a people person. I love to get to know different kinds of people.
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The cost of liberty is less than the price of repression.
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In business, you're the Chief Salesman. Create a sense of demand, rather than waiting to have demand.
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I love stories about two people who are doing illegal things, who we really enjoy watching despite the fact that we know they are doomed in some way.
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I love Channing Tatum!
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As a child, my mother told me lots of fairy stories, many her own invention. She, too, tended to reverse the norm.
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Mothers are the people who love us for no good reason. And those of us who are mothers know it's the most exquisite love of all.
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I used to play hooky from school so I could watch cooking shows.
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The go-to reflex all over Hollywood is still likeability. I've always had a problem with it because I think I have a weird barometer in the sense that some of the characters I've cared about the most in movies are characters that are often thought of as despicable.
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When I got out of college, I moved to Seattle because it was the nearest big city and still didn't know if I wanted to be a composer, conductor, singer, actor. I just got day jobs and auditioned and took what came, and the theater doors were the ones opening the most.
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When you have to get into the character each morning, give it your voice, your face, it was torture.
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Ferran Adria making hamburgers... some thought it was crazy. But getting them perfect was a challenge. Plus I'm fascinated by all aspects of food.
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Theatre is organic, film is not. Theatre you come every day and you work with a group of people and you're are all up for it and you all get to do the whole thing every night, be it two hours or three hours. In film you work in two or three minute bits and it's never in chronological order and then someone takes that away and makes it look like it all happened, or that you gave that performance.
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Believe it or not, I've got a really bad metabolism. One burger and I'm done. I'm not a guy that puts away 10 burgers.
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I've played 'Latin-looking spiv, third from the right' so many times I can't count.
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Box gap is not a thing. If you need to back up to a mirror and bend over to find out how you look, you are playing to the wrong audience.
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Mos Def is a name that I built and cultivated over the years, it's a name that the streets taught me, a figure of speech that was given to me by the culture and by my environment, and I feel I've done quite a bit with that name. [But] it's time to expand and move on.
