Kanye West

If there’s anything that I can do with my time and my day to somehow make a difference, while I’m alive, imma try to do it. Period.

We’re numb. We’re numb to 500 kids getting killed in Chicago last year. We’re numb that there were dozens of police shootings in the beginning of July. We’re numb to places on the earth where we don’t live. Our life is OK, but it’s OK for other people’s lives to not be OK.

Yes, we are celebrities, but yes, we’re also innovators, we’re also inventors, we’re also thoughtful.

Carine Roitfeld is the Walt Disney of what Tumblr is today. She is the Kanye West of what Tumblr is today. She’s the single most important person to what street style is today. Carine Roitfeld is the Walt Disney of what Tumblr is today. She is the Kanye West of what Tumblr is today. She’s the single most important person to what street style is today.

I think an extreme thing; I adjust it, I adjust it, I adjust it. That’s the way I get to it, but I have to push to, you know, the furthest concept possible.

I was so happy when I saw Jimmy Kimmel walk out in the Yeezys. That was an olive branch. He lead with love. I appreciate Jimmy and his team. You guys are Jedi’s. much love.

Jazz is very much alive. Everywhere I go there’s a new generation of musicians playing Jazz music.

Inspiration may be a form of superconsciousness, or perhaps of subconsciousness – I wouldn’t know. But I am sure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.

I got out of the car and there was a knife in my neck. The guy says, “Don’t move.” And the drummer got out of the car, and he got a gun in his head. This was my entrance to the South Side of Chicago. But it was necessary, because I wanted to play jazz.

Music gives us a lot of things and it only wants one thing back… your attention.

I’ll always remember when I first heard Lester [Young]. I’d never heard anyone like him before. He was a stylist with a different sound. A sound I’d never heard before or since. To be honest with you, I didn’t much like it at first.

[In 1969] I think lyrics have always been important to any serious writer of music.

It made no sense to ignore them and to continue writing as if they did not exist. I felt that it was worth the effort to see if I couldn’t say what I had to say in the simplest possible terms.

The great jazz instrumentalists taught me how to sing and interpret a song. they showed me how a horn can have as much personality as an actor.

Jazz is not background music. You must concentrate in order to get the most out of it. You must absorb it.

I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know

Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.

I sought some kind of freedom in music, in the promise of transcendence and the idea that the purity and the innocence of a mythical god could somehow deliver me from darkness.

I don’t have to lay on the couch and see a therapist because my therapy is in art.

One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you’re into jazz.

Knowledge speaks, wisdom listens.