Saul Williams Quotations

We cannot continually barricade ourselves under some falsified idea of race, because our idea of blackness and race is simply reactionary. Africans didnt walk around Africa being black and proud, they walked around proud.

I think it's a mistake where rap music is these days. It doesn't seem to be able to look out of the ghetto and that's ultimately unfortunate, because it defines our limitations.

Hip-hop is still cool at a party. But to me, hip-hop has never been strictly a party; it is also there to elevate consciousness.

Legislation won't necessarily start a riot. But the right song can make someone pick up a chair.

The MC that we love are usually the ones that we consider be kinda heartless, like 50 Cent. That's pretty much the prowess and power of an MC. That's what sells.

Why shouldn't rap be esoteric, able to take in current events, history and criticism? I guess it's this old idea of containment - that rappers, because they're black, can't and shouldn't aspire to look outside the ghetto for influence.

I remember back in the day when Chuck D called hip-hop the 'black people's CNN.' Well now, hip-hop is more like Fox News. It's biased, and highly suspect.

I have an acquired taste for language, yet it is seldom an actual focus of mine.

If we're gonna progress as a people we are going to realise that, as one of my favourite poets says, the other is a lie. There are no other people. Race is a social construct.

'Niggy Tardust' is the voice of a generation, a generation that does not define itself simply by what it's born into.

The only reason I've been so critical of hip-hop is because I've always been aware of the effect that it has, and the reflection that it gives of the African-American community

The downfall of the industry seems to actually be good for art. I think the industry will find their way once the focus shifts from its greed-based origins, downsizes, and begins to support creative visions that speak to our times and shifting ideals.

The most powerful political voices are those with a different way of seeing and processing the world and the sounds that emanate from it.

I was always making up rhymes. But I never thought that poetry would become my life.

The music aids the message, it's there to punctuate and abbreviate and shape the silence

What's wrong with hip-hop is the system that controls the definition of it. There needs to be more balance on the airwaves.

Hip-hop is too young to put a definition on it

I didn't ever want to make a rap album. I considered it too limiting. Now that's exactly what I've gone and done

I'm very excited about the resurgence of vinyl which seems to parallel a growing interest in live performance

You can't do anything that's not political in this time and age.

The MC has to be just that, a master in control. They can show no signs of weakness.

Jay Z and President Bush have a lot in common, that same brash confidence

I am hoping for peaceful transition into a new age. Obama has already played a great role in initiating us into that vision. If he were to be harmed in any way, it would spawn the birth of a million Obamas.

I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It's not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written

I've always been inspired by a lot of work coming out of the UK

More people than ever are slowly but surely turning their ears toward poetry

There's no doubt in my mind that 'Slam' is going to be huge. It's a film about the power of language. People are going to see this and get blown away.

Books are carefully folded forests/void of autumn/bound from the sun

They say that I am a poet I wonder what they would say if they saw me from the inside I bottle emotions and place them into the sea for others to unbottle on distant shores I am unsure as to whether they ever reach and for that matter as to whether I ever get my point across or my love

I don't really believe in writer's block or anything like that. If I'm not feeling words, I may pick up an instrument and play with sounds or delve into different types of creativity and expression.

My father's a preacher, my mother's a teacher, thus I rhyme.

If not then you must be trying to hear us and in such cases we cannot be heard. We remain in the darkness, unseen. In the center of unpeeled bananas, we exist. Uncolored by perception. Clothed to the naked eye. Five senses cannot sense the fact of our existence. And that's the only fact. In fact, there are no facts.

Niggy Tardust' is the voice of a generation, a generation that does not define itself simply by what it's born into.

I used to have weird practices in crowded used-book stores in New York where I'd go in and just stomp my foot and see what fell from the shelf. And of course, because it's an unexpected encounter, there's always some magic that comes from it.

Сommercial hip-hop is not youth rebellion, not when the heroes of hip-hop like Puffy are taking pictures with Donald Trump and the heroes of capitalism - you know that's not rebellion. That's not "the street" - that's Wall Street.

this is her body this is her blood

There is a lot of fun to be had when you try and fit as many words as you can within a three-minute song, but there is also a lot of fun in trying to get that message across in three words, or better yet when the music can overpower the words and convey something really pure and perfect... It's as simple as wanting to lift the spirits.

When I can feel you breathing into me i, like a stone gargoyle atop some crumbling building, spring to life a resuscitated angel.

pools of blood are not recreational even lifeguards drown when the undertow breaks bread with the underbelly demons disguised as sharks have not put enough thought into their costumes a wiseman stays ashore when pointed fins read like italian subtitles the end is near (...) the beginning

the anchor man thrown overboard has simply rooted us in history's repeating cycle

It was always important to me to be that kid who could rock the party as well as rock the English professor's mind.

Talk to strangers when the family fails and friends lead you astray when Buddha laughs and Jesus weeps and it turns out God is gay. 'Cause angels and messiahs love can come in many forms: in the hallways of your projects, or the fat girl in your dorm, and when you finally take the time to see what they’re about perhaps you find them lonely or their wisdom trips you out.

When I wake up in the morning, the first things that I see are the clouds. They're right there. I look out my window now and there's always, always a black bird of some sort on the ledge there. Usually I wake up and look at the birds.

Two autumns and I have not changed enough.

I think everybody on this planet does that - trying to capture your dream after you wake up.

i am like a survivor of the flood walking through the streets drenched with God surprised that all of the drowned victims are still walking and talking

I'm usually trying to get back into the dream or analyzing the dream. And yeah, the days, most days begin like that.

For all the ghosts and corpses that shall never know the breath of our children so long for the sacrifice and endurance of our mothers and the sustained breath of our fathers we live

If you're just addressing your own emotions and challenging yourself to find some sort of harmonious sense of being in life and questioning authority and questioning what's given and questioning what's expected of you, you're already on the cusp of finding something in yourself, and maybe waking something in somebody else.

There's so much to be found in literature, especially if you don't have the money to travel or the means to get out of your neighborhood or get off work.

I have a very family-like connection to hip-hop, which is why it frustrates me so much.

I've never believed it's really so important that you conform to the ways of the system in order to beat the system. I think that the system follows a great deal.

I feel pretty vulnerable all the time.

What I'm aiming to do within hip-hop is to point out that the music itself is powerful; it reaches so many people.

I feel that people need to be jolted out of their comfort zones.

You change the beat up, you might change the way people dance to the music. If you change the way they move, maybe they'll think about it differently.

I'm a very sensitive person at times. Not just to words that anybody says, but in relationships for example, the people that you open up to, you listen to, you hear - you know? So a lot of times, the key to some of my vulnerability is just through things, simple things - or critiques or whatever - or could be very simple things that are said.

The role that theater has placed in enhancing consciousness and moving systems ahead. I think of what South African theater meant for the apartheid movement, for example. I think of what music has meant for so many social movements across time.

I want to connect music to its highest power - which is heightening consciousness and affecting people's reality. That can't be done in normal ways, not according to my experience.

Vulnerability is power.

I'm somewhat of an empath, I would say. I relate easily to ideas and stories, books, films, music. I'm moved by all of these things. Art in general. But not just art, you know?

Art itself is underserved when we don't realize the power of it.

I think it's misleading to think that art is only there for escapism, only there for our dreams of being rich and f - king whoever we wanna f - k.

I spend my time sitting in train stations, parks, parking lots, cafes, just looking at people - eavesdropping, basically. I'm vulnerable to all of it.

American culture is often so self-consumed that we often think that our problems are just our problems.

The hero is the person who's afraid to run away.

The organization of self, and all self-aligning principles would be those that I promote.

I think everything has its place. So if the ideas or the fluidity isn't coming in writing, maybe it's related to ingestions.

A lie preserved in stained glass doesn't make it more true.

i laced my shoes with sorrow and walked a weary road dead end streets don't come undone with double knots wing tipped shoes that walk on air through vacant lots

Fax me a fact and I'll telegram a hologram or telephone the son of man and tell him he is done. Leave a message on his answering machine telling him there are none. God and I are one. Times moon. Times star. Times sun. The factor is me. You remember me.

Half of the popcorn sh-t that's out there, we know it's popcorn. But we're like, "It's my guilty pleasure." I feel like we have more guilty pleasure than actual f - kin' pleasure.

It's crazy when you see very little reflection between what's played on the radio and what people are talking about in the streets. It lets you know how far off we are from a real movement.

Your library teacher would say, "What happens to a generation that doesn't read the Classics?" Me, I'm not your library teacher. But I have some of the same questions and concerns, you know?

We all have different relationships with music. But the music is always there

I have offered myself to the inkwell of the wordsmith that I might be shaped into new terms of being.

When I look at certain aspects of popular culture - not everything because I like a lot of things - sometimes my heart breaks a little bit, just a little bit. I begin to ponder what happened to this generation, I don't know.

only through new words might new worlds be called into order

The wind is the moon's imagination wandering.

I was fed by the music I listened to as a kid. Hip-hop fed me psychologically, spiritually, politically. I learned from that music.

The thing I've been talking about with daughter is the idea of - and I'm talking about essentially in America - the possibility of, a lost generation. I've been listening to a lot of music - as a fan, as a critic, as somebody who likes to dance - but I hear, you know, within these songs and half the people I hear, these philosophies encoded and embedded in these songs.

You can travel through literature, and you can expand your mind through literature. It's so cheap to buy that kind of ticket.

Art can play a major role. I look at art as an alternative source of energy, the same way we might look at wind or solar or lithium batteries.

Dying is something you have no control over. Why waste your life being afraid of it?

I think that heartbreak is a good thing.

Come, my love, we have oceans to sail.

intelligence is intuitive you needn't learn to love unless you've been taught to fear and hate

If you feel something, you should do it.

she kissed as if she, alone, could forge the signature of the sun

I keep trying to forget, but I must remember. And gather the scattered continents of a self, once whole. Before they plant flags and boundary my destiny. Push down the watered mountains that blemish this soiled soul before the valleys of my conscience get the best of me. I'll need a passport just to simply reach the rest of me. A vaccination for a lesser god's bleak history.

the greatest Americans have not been born yet they are waiting patiently for the past to die

It's not the rules everywhere, you know? That's not the rules everywhere - that things have to be dumbed down in order to become massively popular. And that hasn't always been the rule, even in America.

Some rather seek up high Than dig and grind that inner truth

My love is my soul's imagination... how do I love you... imagine.

Music has always pushed ahead social movements and can do much more than just dumb down a populace.

I dance for no reason, for reasons you can't dance, Call me an activist of intellectualized circumstance You can't learn my steps until you unlearn your thoughts Spirit, soul, can't be store-bought.

Honestly, I don't always want to get up in the mornings, but I do anyway.

Fax me a fact, and I'll telegram a hologram.

I think that good writing is based on good reading. Maybe it's not about writing today, maybe it's about reading today. Maybe it's about finding the sort of book you would never read.

When I finally decide that I'm ready to get out of bed, it could be the sunlight, it could be the fact that I'm awake, and, OK, first of all, I wake up in the morning because I have to go to the bathroom.