Jay-Z Quotes
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I'm a person that works off of music. I let the music dictate the direction.
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If you want the old me, go buy my old albums.
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You can pay for school, but you can't buy class
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Got some, dirt on my shoulder, could you brush it off for me?
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You learn more in failure than you ever do in success
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Ain't nothin' wrong with the aim, just gotta change the target.
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You know the type: loud as a motorbike but wouldn't bust a grape in a fruit fight.
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All these ways we classify things as R&B and hip-hop and rock... It's bullshit. It's all music. If you put yourself in that box, then you won't be able to hear that it's all music at its soul.
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You put the right artist on the right track in the studio and leave the door open to let God in.
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This is why we shouldn't be afraid. There are two possibilities: One is that there's more to life than the physical life, that our souls "will find an even higher place to dwell" when this life is over. If that's true, there's no reason to fear failure or death. The other possibility is that this life is all there is. And if that's true, then we have to really live it - we have to take it for everything it has and "die enormous" instead of "living dormant," as I said way back on "Can I Live." Either way, fear is a waste of time.
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The burden of poverty isn't just that you don't always have the things you need, it's the feeling of being embarrassed every day of your life, and you'd do anything to lift that burden.
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When I listen to great music, the first thing I wonder is what people were saying when this came out of the speakers in the studio. I want to know what happened when they played it and said, "This is the one!"
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I would run into the corner store, the bodega, and just grab a paper bag or buy juice - anything just to get a paper bag. And I'd write the words on the paper bag and stuff these ideas in my pocket until I got back. Then I would transfer them into the notebook.
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Everything evens up, you just wait, Even a garbage can gets a steak, You ain't even a garbage can, you have faith!
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I'm hungry for knowledge. The whole thing is to learn every day, to get brighter and brighter. That's what this world is about. You look at someone like Gandhi, and he glowed. Martin Luther King glowed. Muhammad Ali glows. I think that's from being bright all the time, and trying to be brighter.
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No one's walking around here perfect. Everyone's gonna make mistakes. That's part of how you learn.
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You ain't gotta go to church to find your God.
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And now we're lethal, infected with D'Evils
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New York has a thousand universes in it that don't always connect but we do all walk the same streets, hear the same sirens, ride the same subways, see the same headlines in the Post, read the same writings on the walls. That shared landscape gets inside of all of us and, in some small way, unites us, makes us think we know each other even when we don't.
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I keep my enemies close/ I give 'em enough rope/ They put themselves in the air/ I just kick away the chair.
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It was a very intense and stressful situation. There was playing in the Johnny-pump (an opened fire hydrant) and the ice-cream man coming around and all of these games that we'd play, and suddenly it would turn just violent and there would be shootings at 12 in the afternoon on any given day.
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I'm not a businessman, I'm a business, man!
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How could I be out there and not do anything?
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Without the work, the magic won’t come.