Jay-Z (Shawn Corey Carter) Quotes
Boxing is a glorious sport to watch and boxers are incredible, heroic athletes, but it's also, to be honest, a stupid game to play. Even the winners can end up with crippling brain damage. In a lot of ways, hustling is the same. But you learn something special from playing the most difficult games, the games where winning is close to impossible and losing is catastrophic: You learn how to compete as if your life depended on it. That's the lesson I brought with me to the so-called "legitimate" world.
Quotes to Explore
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Under conditions of tyranny it is far easier to act than to think.
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I don't like to say anything good. I feel like I'll jinx myself.
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Catholics and evangelicals need to remain allied, and in solidarity, against the increasingly aggressive secularism of our age.
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I realized that women's liberation is men's liberation, too.
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It's only Western civilization that, God forbid, you talk about dying, when it's the only thing we know for certain, right? Everyone's going to die, so what's the big problem? 'Oh, God. Don't talk about it. Don't think about it.' I mean, I'm one of them. I'm not a big fan of talking about dying.
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Major success feels a bit like a coronation. Like I'd become a king. I was one of the most famous people in the world, loved and hated in equal measure. I couldn't see anything bad with it. It made me a happy person.
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It didn't scare me to be vulnerable because I think that's when you get something great.
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I shall have a beautiful dream tonight. I also wish everyone to have a beautiful dream.
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I think people like Steve Vai are so boring.
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Acting offers me an outlet. Here is the perfect opportunity to spend fleeting moments becoming an entirely different person; to experience a character entirely unlike myself, but to also make such a character a part of me. There is no routine here; there is no boredom.
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You can find dozens of books about people taking the Trans-Siberian Railroad. I knew I had to do something different to cross Siberia. To drive and to talk with people along the way, that was how I wrote my book 'Great Plains'. I drove and camped in Siberia, but did not have a real program.
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I think that music and visual arts can complement themselves nicely. They do different things - the music forces you into a different mood and perspective whilst the visual stuff can engage you in a more direct cognitive manner.
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Eighty-five per cent of the crowd is going to fall in love with me - they're going to feel it, wow. But fifteen per cent are going to think, 'This guy is obnoxious.' I spend enormous time with them - every negative review of 'Crush It!' on Amazon has a response from me - and I can probably bring back ten of the fifteen.
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I'd always wanted to be on Broadway one day, but it seemed like a dream that might be unattainable. This business has a lot of ups and downs and I learned that pretty quickly.
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I was told that, when 'Betrayal' was being produced by one of the provincial companies in England, the two actors playing those roles actually went into a pub one day and played that scene as if it were really happening to them. The people around them became very uncomfortable.
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The red-carpet thing of premieres and parties is probably my least favourite part of my job.
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If you only believe that you're an artist when you have a big advance in your pocket and a single coming out, I would say that's quite soulless. You have to have a sense of your own greatness and your own ability from a very deep place inside you. I am the one with the litmus test in my hands of what people need to hear next.
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Mama is my chance to be a stand-up comedian. In my mind, it's my chance to be Chris Rock.
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I wanted as little formal linguistic theory as I could get by with. I wanted the basic linguistic training to do a translation of the New Testament.
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The only way people can really be excellent is with truth, so you have to have a CFO who will have the intellectual capacity and conviction to tell you you're wrong and try to support that with data.
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When someone would come up to me in the street, I would either run away or burst into tears. I didn't know what to do. I don't think you're ever prepared for this.
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Dutch prisons are probably the most civilized you're going to find anywhere in the world.
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Boxing is a glorious sport to watch and boxers are incredible, heroic athletes, but it's also, to be honest, a stupid game to play. Even the winners can end up with crippling brain damage. In a lot of ways, hustling is the same. But you learn something special from playing the most difficult games, the games where winning is close to impossible and losing is catastrophic: You learn how to compete as if your life depended on it. That's the lesson I brought with me to the so-called "legitimate" world.
