Yasiin Bey (Mos Def) Quotes
Beef is not what Jay said to Nas; Beef is when the working folks can't find jobs.

Quotes to Explore
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I had 45 amateur fights, and I was able to win two national titles in those three years as an amateur.
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Greetings and death to our enemies.
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When I was young, about 18 or 19, I read all the Dostoyevsky novels, which made me want to go to St. Petersburg. So I went, and I was so inspired.
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Sometimes words are harder than blows.
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My husband wrote the story for my first book, but then he didn't want to do that anymore. So if I was going to go on being an illustrator, I had to start writing the stories, too.
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If you're not careful, you can fall into a destructive cycle of self-pity.
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You're going to change as you grow older, and that messes up a lot of relationships.
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If you think about people's lives, you think about what's significant. And the things I find significant in my life are not the moments when people are yelling at each other. They're the moments when someone says something that is very poignant, but oftentimes not loud.
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I studied at a grammar school and later at the University of Vienna in the Faculty of Medicine.
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It's the thing I struggle with every day: the mental diligence and stamina needed to sit in front of the computer, open the file, start writing and to keep doing so, word after word, until I've created the next story. A combination of learning disability and chronic health issues make that the hardest thing for me.
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The real reform Japan needs is decisive politics when we face issues that need to be decided.
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As a team, you need to come from behind every once in awhile just to do it. Good for the attitude. It makes it exciting. And when everybody knows you have to throw it... that makes it fun too.
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I'm a person who has a lot of energy. So, yes, I don't really stop to rest or de-stress. I just keep going. I figure that if you don't stop, then you'll never notice how tired you are.
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If corporate leaders and their acolytes are not slaves to some meritorious social purpose, they run the risk of being enslaved by their own ignoble appetites.
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I wanted nothing less than to be a fiction writer when I was a kid. If you had told me I would be an artist or novelist when I grew up, I would have laughed in your face.
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I don't do the L.A. scene. I stay focused and very myopic. I don't feel I need to prove myself or be in people's faces, especially in this town.
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I played English football - soccer - instead of American football, because we couldn't afford the equipment.
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Any time you write history, you insert your opinion. You pick and choose what you are going to write about. I feel really happy not inserting myself. I spend too much of my life inserting myself. It's just great to let other people carry the narrative.
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I think that when people who've had success from a young age go through a train-wreck cycle, it's usually because they're working on someone else's terms, so they feel the need to rebel. But when it's something you've built, you don't have that same kind of resentment or angstiness. But it's also difficult to keep those standards for yourself.
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The problems of all of humanity can only be solved by all of humanity.
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I just love stories, and I love movies, learning and seeing the world. Growing up in Iowa, it was like, you wanna see the world? Movies can help you do that.
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I was listening to a lot of really early house music tracks. Like Chicago house and Detroit. And Marshall Jefferson has a track probably from 1980 - somewhere around there - that doesn't actually have any electronic instruments, no drum machines, nothing. Just a drummer and a piano player and they're playing this house music, but they're actually playing it. I really love that aesthetic and wanted to bring that into the album.
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Beef is not what Jay said to Nas; Beef is when the working folks can't find jobs.