Faired Def Quotes

To me, playing an instrument and singing, all of these different things are just as natural to me as rhyming. ~ Mos Def

I don't have advice for people on how to dress. People should dress based on what they find beautiful. My best advice: Keep your clothes clean. ~ Mos Def

Mos Def is a name that I built and cultivated over the years it's a name that the streets taught me a figure of speech that was given to me by the culture and by my environment and I feel I've done quite a bit with that name and it's time to expand and move on. ~ Mos Def

I can't take it y'all
I can feel the city breathin
Chest heavin, against the flesh of the evening
Sigh before we die like the last train leaving ~ Mos Def

I can't control what people think. I'm not trying to manipulate people's thoughts or sentiments. I write all the time. You have to experience life, make observations, and ask questions. It's machine-like how things are run now in hip-hop, and my ambitions are different. ~ Mos Def

I ain't no perfect man I'm tryna do the best that I can with what it is I have. ~ Mos Def

I got my first exposure to Islam when I was 13. ~ Mos Def

I stretched my arms towards the sky like blades of tall grass
The sun beat between my shoulders like carnival drums
I sat still in hopes that it would help my wings grow
So then I could really be fly
And then she arrived
Like day break inside a railway tunnel
Like the new moon, like a diamond in the mines
Like high noon to a drunkard, sudden
She made my heart beat in a now-now time signature
Her skinny canvas for ultraviolet brushstrokes
She was the sun's painting
She was a deep cognac color
Her eyes sparkled like lights along the new city
She lips pursed as if her breath was too sweet
And full for her mouth to hold
I said, "You are the beautiful, the stress of mathematics."
I said, "For you, I would peel open the clouds like new fruit
And give you lightning and thunder as a dowry
I would make the sky shed all of it's stars, light and rain
And I would clasp the constellations across your waist
And I would make the heavens your cape
And they would be pleased to cover you
They would be pleased to cover you
May I please, cover you, please ~ Mos Def

There's probably a bunch of Power Stripe floating through the Def Jam offices right now. ~ Method Man

The passage that he had found in the book had been riddled with ambiguities and contradictions only reserved for those most valiant in overriding their legalistic forbearance into a necessary frenzy that would allow them to suitably work up a case for one side or the other on how the Law, without the possibility of misinterpretation, states If ABC, then DEF - or for the sake of acknowledging the counterargument first as a courtroom tactic, the case might also be made that the Law states the antithesis of the aforementioned If ABC, then DEF, but gives allowance within reasonable parameters for a provisional XYZ to be granted in exceptional cases. And thus, it was a matter not so much of making one's case in a clear and logical sense, but one for the lawyers to battle out in the arena of pathos, as it was clearly the emotional pleas that could evoke a sense of sympathy in the courtroom and overturn otherwise painstaking endeavors at using the tools at hand to make pleas based upon incontrovertible facts. ~ Ashim Shanker

Aging on camera is just very hard. I love my age. I feel good about myself but high definition television is not kind. You don't even look like yourself in high-def. It just makes every little line on your face more exaggerated so it ends up aging you. It's like you're watching yourself seven years older. ~ Lisa Edelstein

You can positively affect and change a social circumstance with art, and it's vital that a change happens now. ~ Mos Def

It started off really ... claustrophobic. I feel like I was really really protected. Really guarded with myself. I feel like they [Def Jam] were giving me the blueprint and I couldn't get with that ~ Rihanna

I been to many malls from state to state,But I've never been in, say, one this great.I hate to say, about the other shopping centers that's left,But the Albee Square Mall is the doo-doo-def! ~ Biz Markie

To me, it's like happiness is about happiness, but happiness is a fight. ~ Mos Def

I tell people all the time, I've always loved music and I love the language, which is a huge reason why I'm part of theater. But, I didn't wanna do all of this. I would've been satisfied to do it, like, on the weekends among friends, and to have a regular job. ~ Mos Def

Record companies are not necessarily interested in you realizing your artistic dream. The bottom line is that they got to sell records. ~ Mos Def

African art is functional, it serves a purpose. It's not a dormant. It's not a means to collect the largest cheering section. It should be healing, a source a joy. Spreading positive vibrations. ~ Mos Def

I met Mos Def around that time but I didn't hook up with him until I was about 17 or 18. ~ Talib Kweli

I can think of no one more relevant and credible in the hip-hop community to build upon Def Jam's fantastic legacy and move the company into its next groundbreaking era. ~ Jay-Z

I feel like I was the only person who was capable of making this type of music in this type of way. I don't rap like nobody, I don't try to sound like nobody. ~ Mos Def

It didn't occur to me that I was glistening with sweat and wearing a bikini top until they turned off the bikes, pulled off their helmets and turned to scope me out. To make my own personal cliché perfect, Def Leppard's Pour Some Sugar On Me blasted through the radio. I winced – I must look like a white-trash princess from hell, basking outside my trailer in a bikini to outdated butt rock. ~ Joanna Wylde

That was true, Iris would sometimes think, about marriage: it was only a boat, too. A wooden boat, difficult to build, even more difficult to maintain, whose beauty derived at least in part from its unlikelihood. Long ago the pragmatic justifications for both marriage and wooden-boat building had been lost or superseded. Why invest countless hours, years, and dollars in planing and carving, gluing and fastening, caulking and fairing, when a fiberglass boat can be had at a fraction of the cost? Why struggle to maintain love and commitment over decades when there were far easier ways to live, ones that required no effort or attention to prevent corrosion and rot? Why continue to pour your heart into these obsolete arts? Because their beauty, the way they connect you to your history and to the living world, justifies your efforts. A long marriage, like a classic wooden boat, could be a thing of grace, but only if great effort was devoted to its maintenance. At first your notions of your life with another were no more substantial than a pattern laid down in plywood. Then year by year you constructed the frame around the form, and began layering memories, griefs, and small triumphs like strips of veneer planking bent around the hull of everyday routine. You sanded down the rough edges, patched the misunderstandings, faired the petty betrayals. Sometimes you sprung a leak. You fell apart in rough weather or were smashed on devouring rocks. But then, as now, in the teeth of a storm, ~ Ayelet Waldman

Bob Marley performed the 'One Love Peace' concert in Jamaica with the two different warring political sides. There's always been that in black music and culture in general. It's no surprise because black music is such a reflection of what's going on in black life. It's not unusual for hip-hop. ~ Mos Def

I never had any ambitions of being a movie star or anything like that, but you know, this is nice. ~ Mos Def

I've always loved rhyming. I love language. ~ Mos Def

Good art provides people with a vocabulary about things they can't articulate. ~ Mos Def

Hip-hop is rock & roll. What the hell is Wu-Tang but Motorhead? ~ Mos Def

Hip-hop is a beautiful culture. It's inspirational, because it's a culture of survivors. You can create beauty out of nothingness. ~ Mos Def

I don't dislike rappers or hip-hop or people who like it. I went to the Def Jam tour in Manchester in the '80s when rap was inspirational. Public Enemy were awesome. But it's all about status and bling now, and it doesn't say anything to me. ~ Noel Gallagher

Make today's solid ground out of yesterday's quicksand. ~ Mos Def

The world has wanted me to speak differently than I speak. I speak like my mom. I speak like the whitest white dude. I speak like a "Def Comedy Jam" comedian doing an impression of a white guy. ~ Jordan Peele

I'm growing as an individual, but your always growing. All of my albums are snapshots of where I am artistically. ~ Mos Def

The dimensions of video game characters, even when they're scanned from real people, are beefed up with exaggerated proportions in games like Def Jam: Fight for NY to give them more pop. ~ Cliff Bleszinski

Restlessness is my nemesis/ It's hard to just chill and sit still ~ Mos Def

I guess something that you love to do, you gotta ease up off it and give it a little space, come back and be fresh to it. ~ Mos Def

And from the moment that I saw you, I knew you was trouble,
But I disregarded detour signs,
And did not stop til you was mine.
I guess God was like, 'Aight, fine.'
Careful what you wish for, cause you just might get it in heaps.
Try to give it back, He be like, 'Nah, that's yours to keep.' ~ Mos Def

Although, your stripping skills could use a bit of work.

Yeah, well, excuse the fuck out of me. You just said take them off... wasn't aware I was supposed to put on some Def Leppard and make a show of it. ~ J.M. Darhower

There was a time when hip-hop was its own musical principle, aside from sampling. Like the entire Wild Style break is instrumental. Kurtis Blow's earliest stuff was studio musicians playing. Whodini had a real clear sound, things like "five minutes of funk," stuff that you could write really beautiful, lush string and horn arrangements around, stuff that was just music. ~ Mos Def

People consider Black Star a great album, and I think it's a classic album. But the fact is, both me and Mos Def have made better albums since Black Star. ~ Talib Kweli

Ya better come inside
when you're ready to
but no chance if ya don't wanna dance
you like four letter words when you're ready to
but then you won't 'cos you know that you can
~ Def Leppard

I don't care about what brand you are, I'm concerned what type of man you are, what your principles and standards are. ~ Mos Def

Speech is my hammer bang the world into shape now let it fall - HUNGH ~ Mos Def

It's possible and available to any artist to be himself or herself on their own terms, to be accepted and embraced by black people. You don't have to be a thug to get love from black people. ~ Mos Def

Man, I smashed her like an Idaho Potato ~ Mos Def

Def Leppard is a rock band that can sing. ~ Vivian Campbell

My presence speaks volumes before I say a word. ~ Mos Def

I get reminded a lot of the time that my life is a little bit different, but I'm just trying to keep it as regular as possible because I like it that way. ~ Mos Def