Adam Mansbach Quotes
-
I was a rapper and a DJ, and if you wanted to be involved in hip-hop, you had to be involved in the sonic, the kinetic and the visual aspects. The visual was graffiti.
-
I've probably done more than a thousand interviews, and I can't remember what people asked me two months ago or two days ago.
-
Being Jewish is a big part of my artistic sensibility and my humor... I think it gives me a certain take on the world on a literary level.
-
For me, graffiti writers were always the fascinating eccentrics of hip-hop culture. What they do is secretive by definition, and not remunerative in any way.
-
I came up in hip-hop, where people value the ability to tell it straight.
-
Eating is one of the great pleasures of life.
-
To me, 'The End of the Jews' - both the title and the novel itself - is about the end of pat, uncritical ways of understanding oneself in the world.
-
A good cookout ought to last at least six hours; if you haven't eaten and gotten full and gotten hungry and eaten again, you're doing something wrong.
-
Religious traditions are easy to lose sight of in today's marketing frenzy. Make sure you take time to gently usher your little ones into the rituals that have special meaning for you.
-
America has not produced a more salient political musician than Gil Scott-Heron.
-
I think that being Jewish is in some ways unique because there's this conflation of race, culture and religion.
-
My wife likes me to point out that she puts our daughter down to sleep more often than I do, which gives me time to write stupid books about it.
-
I think there's a lot of anxiety about being seen as a bad parent. There's still a lot of subjects that I think people aren't entirely comfortable being honest about.
-
It's hilarious to me that by writing an obscene fake children's book I am mistaken for a parenting expert.
-
While I'm working, I stick with music that won't distract me - the dub stylings of Scientist and King Tubby, maybe some Beethoven string quartets.
-
I believe that writers have a responsibility to evolve the language, whether by introducing new words or new usages. Shakespeare alone is responsible for something like 3400 words and phrases.
-
Children crave routine and find listening to the same stories over and over again soothing. If you've grown weary of the holiday books you've read your kid 7,883 times, try adding 'dude' to the end of every line of dialogue.
-
When I'm writing, I'm in an isolation chamber. I'm not one to think about that outside world stuff when I'm writing.
-
I like to write in coffee shops in countries in which languages I do not speak are spoken. That way, you're surrounded by the buzz of humanity, but you aren't distracted by people's conversations.
-
The publishing industry stopped having new ideas out of respect for the untimely death of Ernest Hemingway in 1961 and has been doing everything the same way ever since.
-
To be a white kid into hip-hop meant you'd sought it out and you practiced the art. Which meant dedication and diligence, as well as removing yourself at least occasionally from your own comfort zone and circumstances, and from people who looked like you.
-
Fundamentally, I'm profoundly influenced by hip-hop, so whatever I do is going to bear that seal.
-
Graffiti writers were the most interesting people in hip hop. They were the mad scientists, the mad geniuses, the weird ones.
-
The goal has been not to get pigeonholed. I like working in different genres. I'm gonna try to be entertaining and funny and do my usual thing.