"I just remember I wanted to make my own dynasty and not keep following trends. I wanted to make my own."

"There's definitely a thin line between being tasteful and tacky."

"Being in the Midwest, you get the best of all worlds and add your own flavor to it."

"I think gold is made for kings and pharaohs - that's what I am."

"Even though it's tiring, I'm having the time of my life."

"I write my own lyrics completely on my own. Sometimes I have people helping me with concepts or like choruses and stuff sometimes, but mostly I write all my own songs by myself, especially the verses and a lot of the choruses."

"It has no color to it. If you can rap good, you can rap good. I look at Mac Miller, who’s one of my homies, and I look at Wiz Khalifa, who’s one of my homies, and I don’t look at Mac different because he’s white. He’s my homie."

"I definitely consider myself a Christian. There's things that I believe in, there's things I have a self-belief on. I know I got a great relationship with God and the universe. I just believe in being a righteous person and karma. Doing unto others as you would have done unto you. I really want to help teach that."

"My mom keeps me going, man. She deserves such a good life. I just wanna give it to her. My dad, too. My family, my friends, they keep me motivated. Just knowing my personal legend, just knowing what I'm supposed to do, that keeps me going."

"You're in good spirits when you create and produce great music. All situations inspire music in different ways, man, from good situations, bad situations, depression, falling in love, falling out of love. I've been going through all those type of things."

"I still got a lot to learn about fashion. I'm somebody who experiments, somebody who's finding their way. I'm young, and I don't really know if there's any guide to style in what's right and what's wrong. I just dress as an extension of how I'm feeling. If I feel crazy, then I'm gonna rock something crazy."

"I think a lot of my fans are anxious for more than just my singles. They know I'm a dreamer. They know I'm someone who is real spiritual. I love to have fun, and I always have fun songs - songs you can party to. But I also always have songs you can live to, that when you're depressed, it may lift your spirits up."

"I usually sing a lot on my mixtapes. I sing a lot on songs that just really aren't singles. Even my first single, 'My Last,' which I feel like is more pop than anything - I was originally singing the chorus on there. I'm used to that. I've always had fresh melodies."

"G.O.O.D. Music is just real tastemakers, man. Kanye's a real tastemaker. One thing that I feel is tight about G.O.O.D. is that a lot of people have their own style, and you can see that. My style is different than Pusha's, it's different than Cudi's. But it's also slightly similar 'cause we have some similar tastes."

"My mom graduated from the University of Michigan, which is a great school. Then she got her Master's from NYU. She wanted to be an actress, so when she graduated, she had a dream, and she started following it. She moved to New York and took acting classes with people like Denzel Washington."

"I grew up on the west side of Detroit - 6 mile and Wyoming - so I was really in the 'hood. And I would go to school at Detroit Waldorf, and that was not the 'hood. Growing up in Detroit was good. I had a good perspective, a well-rounded one, and not being one-sided."

"Definitely just growing up in general influenced me; Detroit happened to be where I was. I feel like the city definitely has made an impact on my life and made me who I am. Detroit has an unmistakable soul - nobody can duplicate the soul we bring to the game. From Motown to J Dilla to Eminem to anything."

"As a crew, G.O.O.D. Music is taking it to levels that really haven't been done collectively. Kanye is someone who knows how to make classic albums, a true thinker. He got me in the mindset of being a true thinker and always planning out every move you got going."

"I don't really write any of my raps down. The same, Kanye don't write any of his raps down. Common. It's easy that way. For me, personally, I figure I will lose some of the inspiration in the time of me writing it down, or I'll say it a certain way because I wrote it a certain way."

"It was probably in third grade - I had a super-fake gold herringbone chain. Yeah man, it was, like, super fake. I don't remember if it was my mom's or how I got it, but ever since then, I've loved chains. The first real chain I got was from Kanye. It was a Jacob the Jeweler Kanye West Jesus piece."

"I just knew what I wanted to be since the third grade. And I always did well in school. I was the type to get good grades; I never really got below Cs or nothing like that. I always kept it A-B. But there's no school for rap."

"I got this tiger head ring that's similar to a Cartier ring. I had my jeweler Sean from Detroit make it similar to the Cartier ring, but gold and diamonded-out. That's my Detroit tiger. It's made with two different golds - the bottom is yellow and the top is gold."

"Adidas is just right. They've been, like, a partner I couldn't be more thankful for. I really feel like they've helped increase my popularity. You know? It's tight to be able to attach to their brand and be able to add whatever I can offer to their brand. It's nice to know that they appreciate it. They are always showing love."

"There's a lot of shoes that people consider high-end fashion, from Balenciaga to this and that or whatever, and the Pro Models are very similar to me. They're very fashionable to me - the design and the shape of them. I just like them."

"I had an advantage because people would post me on blogs because I had co-signs from Kanye West, Def Jam, and G.O.O.D. Music. Everything I put out, the blogs would put up. When I realized that, I used that to my advantage and helped build my following on my own."

"Kanye didn't sign me to hold my hand and walk me through my career. He signed me because he believed in me as an artist and gave me a co-sign. I didn't see that at first. I saw it as him about to hold my hand, and I'm about to be the biggest artist because he's the biggest artist, you know?"

"People in college, if you're getting recognized for getting good grades, you're finally famous. If you get recognized for playing the drums, if you're being recognized for making good ass beats, good ass raps, you're finally famous."

"It was just cool to see my friends so inspired, and I'm by no means the biggest rapper in the world, but I'm on my way up. I feel like I'm going to keep going and delivering good music every time. It was cool to show people that it's real to do what you want to do."

"Lil Wayne is somebody who I used to ride to school listening to in my car. You know from Tha Carter to Tha Carter II, to Dedication 1 & 2, to Da Drought, his mixtapes. You know you got that for him as him being a rap legend, somebody who you look up to."

"Women cannot complain about men anymore until they start getting better taste in them."

"Suicide is man's way of telling God, 'You can't fire me - I quit!"

"I have a problem with people who take the Constitution loosely and the Bible literally."

"The problem is that the people with the most ridiculous ideas are always the people who are most certain of them." (The Decider, July 21, 2007)"

"Can we go back to using Facebook for what it was originally for - looking up exes to see how fat they got?"

"Let's make a law that gay people can have birthdays, but straight people get more cake--you know, to send the right message to kids."

"I'll show you Obama's birth certificate when you show me Sarah Palin's high school diploma."

"Don't get so tolerant that you tolerate intolerance."

"We have a Bill of Rights. What we need is a Bill of Responsibilities."

"I think religion is a neurological disorder."

"Kids. They're not easy. But there has to be some penalty for sex."

"We need more people speaking out. This country is not overrun with rebels & free thinkers. It's overrun with sheep & conformists."

"Atheism is a religion like abstinence is a sex position."

"That's what's so great about the Internet. It allows pompous blow-hards to connect with other pompous blow-hards in a vast circle-jerk of pomposity."

"The Bible looks like it started out as a game of mad libs."

"I wouldn't touch a hot dog unless you put a condom on it! You realize that the job of a hot dog is to use parts of the animal that the Chinese can't figure out how to make into a belt? -timecode 1:11:10"

"Saying someone is religious is heard in most of America as a compliment, a reassuring affirmation that someone will be moral, ethical, and after a few glasses of wine, a freak in the bedroom."

"You know what happens when windmills collapse into the sea? A splash."

"The true axis of evil in America is the brilliance of our marketing combined with the stupidity of our people."

"Be out of the mainstream. I'm out of the mainstream. I enjoy it, who wants to be in the mainstream?"

"To most Christians, the Bible is like a software license. Nobody actually reads it. They just scroll to the bottom and click 'I agree'."