I'm an artist, and I like the risk - I'm not in it for the sure things.

I'm not allowed to be as liberal as I would like to be, you know? I'd do a lot more damage if I could!

There was a time when I didn't like myself at all. I thought I was a cruel joke. But now I've come to realise that maybe I am not cute, but I am beautiful.

I hate hateful people.

I cry all the time. Music makes me cry.

When it comes to the stage, I can't help but be inspired by people like George Clinton, Elton John and Alice Cooper.

My style is ambiguous and lucid. I wish to be signified but not summed up. I don't want to have to go over the top each time.

I'm all about taking chances. You have to ask yourself, if you're not taking any chances, are you actually even living? Every time you walk out of your door and you're out in the world, you take a chance on not coming back. That is the danger and the dynamic of being alive.

I don't eat a lot of junk food anymore, but I sure remember it. I used to go through boxes of Little Debbies. I liked Star Crunch, and of course those oatmeal pies.

My relationship with food is intimate. I don't eat and tell.

I may sample at Pinkberry, but when I find a flavor I like, I'm pretty committed to it.

I think I'm needed - as an artist, as an individual, as an entity, an enigma, an exhibitionist, an entertainer - as an alternative.

It's hard to write a song about reality because reality doesn't rhyme.

In my opinion, hip-hop has a lot to do with rock and roll, because at one point it was considered an alternative - edgy, independent. Hip-hop is pots and pans the way that punk is garage. You make something out of nothing.

I do like the ladies an awful lot. Surprisingly enough, it turns out ladies like me back; I'm a really good guy.

People have always questioned, Was I crazy? And I'm like, 'No, I'm not crazy. I'm just totally committed.'

All I'll say is... I'm at a point in life when nothing feels shocking to me. I need something to shock me! I'm almost ready to see a U.F.O.

I have a hell-fire temper.

I have done quite a few things that I'm not proud of. But now I can equate it to artistry without an outlet. At school, I couldn't help but colour outside the lines. My passion just caused my reactions to be that much more volatile.

Honestly, this face of mine will always be familiar to people. It's that unique quality, man. If it's a dark and crowded room, people are just able to point me out. I think I'll always be famous. I just hope I don't become infamous.

My first rap name was Ralo. Because my first name is Carlos. I likened myself to what Busta Rhymes was doing when he first came out. And what Onyx did when they first came out - they reminded me of me.

All art stems from a place of alienation. Intimate and alone. Most people are oppressed by the opinion of others, but I was not that way. I was afraid of the repercussions of not doing what I was told to do, what I was called to do by a creator.

I want to burn as a beacon of possibility. I don't want nobody to misconstrue the commercial success I've had as anything other than an example of what black music is capable of. And what it's capable of is being more than just black. I'm not black or white anymore. I'm Cee Lo Green.

The fact that you can love something that's lost is all of the incentive that you'll ever need to love again as opposed to becoming comfortably numb.

I believe that the plight of life and all existence is to master one's self, you know, one day at a time.

Ultimately, I'm a fan of music. I describe writing music sometimes as hieroglyphics, like, you know, excavating, gently brushing off these artifacts and discovering the song underneath it all. It seems as if it is already written in it.

I am a rare occasion. I think if everyone had known it was going be me who succeeded, they would have supported me a lot more. They would have known what to do with me a lot earlier. They just didn't know.

I get a kick out of not being ideal. I think it's awesome. That's entirely the point. And I think my creator is quite a character for letting that be.

Predictability is the cousin of death: I don't necessarily want people to see me coming. You know?

I'm a normal guy at heart. But on stage, they don't pay me for normal.

I would like to be a gang leader on 'Sons of Anarchy' or own a lemonade stand on 'Boardwalk Empire.'

My varied listening palette is all-inclusive of all walks of life. No one individual is exempt from the human experience, so it is that intangible that is a universal truth. In that regard, I've had success in encapsulating something cosmic.

I'm drawn to the unconventional because I've been drawn unconventionally. I believe that I'm supposed to topple over these false images of what's idealistically beautiful. Because, of course, these intangible qualities are very attractive to women. Sincerity. Sense of humor. Success.

I'm not trying to emulate or imitate. But I do believe that I embody that spirit from Robert Johnson on up.

You can't be all of the people you're influenced by, so you make your own filter and create your own beautiful, unique thing in the world. Soak up the world, man, and make something of your own.

Music is a means of spreading the good word and spreading positivity and productivity. Those things speak to me.

I was one of those kids, inner-city youth and finding my way. I made it. I made a success out of myself, surprisingly.

To lose my mother just as I'm right on the brink of crossing that threshold over into a career, it was pretty compelling. My entire career is my mother's work, for me.

It's easy to feel helpless - like you can't fight the tide. But remember: small actions can have a huge impact, and one person like you can inspire others to action.

Somewhere in the Commandments of Reviewing must be written, 'Thou shalt not compare Asians to non-Asians.'

I think, in the United States, we talk about race as a black and white issue... We're generally talking about it as if it's a binary equation whereas, in fact, there's more than two races and, in fact, those races blend together. There are a lot of different ways that people identify.

I moved to Shaker Heights from Pittsburgh, PA, just before I turned 10.

A good poem is an amazing thing: a perfectly distilled, articulate moment. It opens you up - sometimes slowly, like the blooming of a flower, and sometimes with a quick knife-slice.

No reader wants to sit through the same scene four times in a row, unless they're radically different.

There's a great joy in writing about a place you know very well, but there's also a lot of responsibility in trying to be accurate. It's a lot like writing about a relative: you can see both their strengths and their shortcomings, and even as you want to be honest, you want people to see the good that's there as well.

What I remember about race relations in the 1990s is that you showed your awareness by saying you didn't see race, that you were colour-blind.

Comparing Asian writers mainly to other Asian writers implies that we're all telling the same story - a disappointingly reductive view.

For me, any story I tackle begins with the human relationships and not the plot.

If you see harassment happening, speak up. Being harassed is terrible; having bystanders pretend they don't notice is infinitely worse.

My parents came to America in the late 1960s because my father studied for a Ph.D. in Indiana. My mother joined him later. We had ancestors who came over at the turn of the century. One worked in a laundry, as is typical of Chinese-American immigrants.