Hip-hop started with street poets with great lyrical skills, and that's what hip-hop has always been about for me.

Since early childhood, I've been trying to learn all I can. Science is everything; it's not just physics. It's the way of understanding your environment, the world around you.

I'm always touching plants and vibing with them.

We were always scientifical in our raps.

I just listen to a lot of stuff. Sometimes I play music; a lot of times, it will be stuff from back in the day. Sometimes I scan through the radio. Not the average stations that play the everyday thing.

I think artists sometimes go back to something when we never should, for many different reasons. You hear a lot of stories that make you feel good about the work and the project; sometimes you try to relive that, like, 'I want to make a part two.'

When we did 'Back In The Game' on the Wu-Tang 'Iron Flag' album, I did a verse about gambling. I didn't want to be 'back in the game' or 'back on the block' - that's typical. I made it all metaphorical.

We've done a lot of shows and a few albums without Dirty. He was a wild and crazy dude.

Even if we didn't make records, we would have done it on the side for fun. Like, some painters sell their work; others just keep it - they love to do it whether they get paid or not.

Writing is sort of like chess for me. You have to think carefully before you move, thinking, planning.

In chess, you have to bring all the pieces into the game. It is about development. In writing, you have to develop the story.

I played on a 10'x10' chessboard at a hotel in Miami. The pieces were heavy, and I got tired just making a move. Not cool with that.

I like snowboarding, and I like to watch it.

I think I'm okay; I got a pretty good shot when I concentrate. I like pool.

I'm a late-night person who likes to eat a lot of breakfast stuff at night.

People say Wu-Tang makes you think too much. What's wrong with thinking?

I think artists should really write more.

Wu-Tang has only done, like, three rehearsals throughout our whole career.

Documentaries sometimes can be shot over 10 years. You plan to stop in two, but you still gotta catch more.

To write a story is to create a world of your own.

I think every being in the universe is connected somehow.

I just have certain interests in different things, and they inspire me to write. I would encourage aspiring artists or MCs or rappers to be able to grab from many different sources to create your story.

As you grow and get older, you evolve.

I could write about a pencil if I wanted to. You just take it back deep enough, all the way back to the tree it came from.

I'm constantly writing.

I get inspired by many different things.

As far as being a vegetarian, it's a moral thing, a health thing, a conscious thing - a combination of all. I think it's better to be that way.

I love Indian food and Thai food; those are, like, my favorites. I also like Japanese and some Italian.

I'm a scientist by nature and not by trade.

I've seen a dude who had the Wu logo tatted on his face. I mean, his whole face was tatted, but the Wu was the biggest thing on his face. That is a statement, something that means a lot to us.

New York is the hometown I represent.

I like science and mathematics. When I say mathematics, I don't mean algebra or math in that sense, but the mathematics of things.

I love nature, and I love information.

Moog has been incorporated in a lot of our music. I know RZA has several of those machines. So, it did play a major role in a lot of music we were doing.

Wu-Tang is looked at like the Rolling Stones of hip-hop.

Wu-Tang is a group that has a cult following.

People are interested in people. They buy biographies; they don't buy studies of presidencies.

When you look at the development of the American presidency, you see that the presidents who have had the greatest impact are the ones who fit their times most successfully.

Politics is not something most people have to do every day. Their daily lives are much more influenced by job opportunities, whether the country is in a recession or a boom period. If you really want to understand what drives American history, look at the economic... side.

The stories that I tell, the topics that I choose to write about, usually are suggested by something that I've done before.

Harry Truman's decision to fire Douglas MacArthur at the height of the Korean War in April 1951 shocked the American political system and astonished the world. Much of the world didn't realize the president had the power to fire a five-star general; much of America didn't realize Truman had the nerve.

Every year, I have my graduate students read the great works of history, from classical times to the present. They gamely tackle Tacitus, ponder Plutarch, plow through Gibbon. Then they get to Thomas Carlyle and feel like Dorothy when she touched down in Technicolor Oz.

I was raised in, and presumably to, the cutlery business. I really didn't think that that's what I wanted to do for a career. But I felt a certain obligation to give it a try.

It's hard to get in the head of somebody. The closest we can get is through the words they've left behind, either their contemporary correspondence or after-the-fact memoirs.

With my first few books, I was aiming at an academic audience, basically, to get tenure. You can presuppose a certain amount of knowledge; you can expect that there is this common background.

When you tell a story, there are imperatives of structure, of style, of pacing and all of this, that are there simply because you want to make it a good story. When do you introduce your characters? When do you put them onstage, when do you take them off the stage? How do you weave the different threads of the narrative together?

I'm trying to tell the story of the evolution of America. Each biography is a life in time, and I can see there's a particular task for each generation that I write about.

The Tea Party loves Reagan because he said exactly what they want to hear.

I had long known the story of Aaron Burr, but when I heard about his remarkable daughter, Theodosia, about the relationship between the two and about her tragic disappearance, I knew I wanted to tell their story.

Reagan has been deified by the Republican Party, which is odd. The Reagan that modern Republicans revere is not the real Reagan.