My career as Nipsey Hussle is based on my life as Ermias Asghedom.

Happiness is a ball after which we run wherever it rolls, and we push it with our feet when it stops.

Early on, I was so impressed with Charles Dickens. I grew up in the South, in a little village in Arkansas, and the whites in my town were really mean, and rude. Dickens, I could tell, wouldn’t be a man who would curse me out and talk to me rudely.

I owe everything to Nirvana. But I can’t let that overshadow the future. For the first few years, I didn’t even want to talk about Nirvana. Partly because it was just painful to talk about losing Kurt but also because I wanted the Foo Fighters to mean something.

True virtue is life under the direction of reason.

Yesterday is not ours to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.

We should all start to live before we get too old.

I’m not afraid of death, but I’m in no hurry to die. I have so much I want to do first.

It’s extremely difficult to get these jobs because you can’t get a job on a ship unless you have seaman’s paper’s, and you can’t get seaman’s papers unless you have a job on a ship. There had to be a way to break through the circle, and he was the one who arranged it for me.

Deep down, I know I have this intuition or instinct that a lot of creative people have, that their demons are also what make them create.

My focus is to forget the pain of life. Forget the pain, mock the pain, reduce it. And laugh.

There’s something boring about people who have to go to an office for a living.

To all the musicians who are making reggaeton, let’s put some more effort into it and bring something new to the people!

To the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure.

Opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor.

To hold a pen is to be at war.

I’m not a prophet or a stone aged man, just a mortal with potential of a superman. I’m living on.

The ideas I stand for are not mine. I borrowed them from Socrates. I swiped them from Chesterfield. I stole them from Jesus. And I put them in a book. If you don’t like their rules, whose would you use?

When small men attempt great enterprises, they always end by reducing them to the level of their mediocrity.

One life is all we have and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.

If you pour your life into songs, you want them to be heard. It’s a desire to communicate. A deep desire to communicate inspires songwriting.

Every man I meet is in some way my superior.

Love is the flower you’ve got to let grow.

First and foremost comes my family and my life with Brad. We have so much joy in raising our children and teaching them about the world that nothing really compares to that.

Billy Graham is one of my great lifetime heroes. I think he epitomizes the essence of what a Christian leader should be. I have participated in some of his crusades a couple of times in Atlanta. I’ve seen the profound impact he’s had on me personally, and on other people who were not Christians and accepted Christ as Savior.

I went to see ‚Phantom of the Opera‘ with my grandma and my mom when I was very little. The stage, the voice, the music… Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber has been a massive inspiration to me for some time – the storytelling, that deliciously somber undertone in his music.

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

Well I think any author or musician is anxious to have legitimate sales of their products, partly so they’re rewarded for their success, partly so they can go on and do new things.

I used to – my earliest memory of waking up with a melody in my head was, you know, 8, 9, 10. I’ve always heard kind of melodies in my head.

There is nothing in the world so much admired as a man who knows how to bear unhappiness with courage.

Imagine for yourself a character, a model personality, whose example you determine to follow, in private as well as in public.

People think, because we’re young, we aren’t complex, but that’s not true. We deal with life and love and broken hearts in the same way a woman a few years older might.

I don’t write the books. God writes the books and delivers the speeches.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

Having a simple career as a musician who liked music was good enough for me.

There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.

I believe that God put us in this jolly world to be happy and enjoy life.

The world is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

You can’t die with an unfinished book.

Words without actions are the assassins of idealism.

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.

It is one of the beautiful compensations in this life that no one can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Akron, Ohio, is my home. It will always be remembered. Akron, Ohio, is my life.

Time stays, we go.

Van Gogh never made a penny in his entire lifetime. He painted because it was his soul, his excitement. It was what aligned him with his Source of being. It’s the same with me and writing.

Success is counted sweetest by those who never succeed.

Wisdom begins in wonder.

The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery.

Life is wasted on the living.

I only wish that ordinary people had an unlimited capacity for doing harm; then they might have an unlimited power for doing good.

Life is full of misery, loneliness, and suffering – and it’s all over much too soon.

Imagination is more important than knowledge.

And poets, in my view, and I think the view of most people, do speak God’s language – it’s better, it’s finer, it’s language on a higher plane than ordinary people speak in their daily lives.

It is the set of the sails, not the direction of the wind that determines which way we will go.

Bill Gates has always been a mentor and inspiration for me even before I knew him. Just growing up, I admired how Microsoft was mission-focused.

You accept that this civilisation could be abolished and life will begin later on after a few thousand years because that is something that has happened in the history of this planet. When you have peace in yourself and accept, then you are calm enough to do something, but if you are carried by despair there is no hope.

Had I pursued my education long enough to learn all the conventional dos and don’ts of starting a business, I often wonder how different my life and career might have been.

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

One strength of the communist system of the East is that it has some of the character of a religion and inspires the emotions of a religion.

When it’s your time, it is your time.

The answer to all writing, to any career for that matter, is love.