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I've had strong opinions probably since I was born. It makes you unpopular, but what can you do?

How do you make it to the top when all you have is ambition and talent? You believe in yourself and surround yourself with other idealistic and talented friends that fuel each other and push against the establishment to take you seriously.

I can't control what people think. I'm not trying to manipulate people's thoughts or sentiments. I write all the time. You have to experience life, make observations, and ask questions. It's machine-like how things are run now in hip-hop, and my ambitions are different.

It is nice to be around people who think differently than you. They challenge your ideas and keep you from being complacent.

Without an open-minded mind, you can never be a great success.

I know how easy it is for some minds to glide along with the current of popular opinion, where influence, respectability, and all those motives which tend to seduce the human heart are brought to bear.

You've got to stick at a thing, a particular thing, until you succeed. I feel that's the only way to succeed - by concentrating on something in particular. Once you know what you've got to do you will succeed, you will succeed.

You have to believe in yourself and only trust your own vision and instincts. If I'd listened to what other people thought about my work in the first 10 years that I was a writer, I never would have made it to begin with.

I succeeded by saying what everyone else is thinking.

Be unselfish. That is the first and final commandment for those who would be useful and happy in their usefulness. If you think of yourself only, you cannot develop because you are choking the source of development, which is spiritual expansion through thought for others.