Lloyd Banks Quotes

Touring is a young man's game, but after 30 years of it, I want to stay home.

At the end of the day, I'm an actor. I'm not here to sell other stuff or use off-screen things to generate whether or not I work. If I'm any good, I'll work; if I'm not, I won't.

I started in '07, and I remember, at that point, nobody was trying to hear from me because I was a young rapper. I'd be saying stuff better than some of what the hottest rappers were saying back then, but nobody was trying to hear from me.

If you think about rap and how it has become so much easier to record music and release it, and you think about everyone in the world being a 'rapper' these days, it's so much easier. But it's still as hard as ever to break through and truly be successful in this industry.

In this time, we incorporate money and media, and it's split up like apartheid, where when you say "hip-hop," you think just rap records. People might have forgot about all the other elements in hip-hop. Now we're back out there again, trying to get people back to the fifth element, the knowledge. To know to respect the whole culture, especially to you radio stations that claim to be hip-hop and you're not, because if you was a hip-hop radio station, why do you just play one aspect of hip-hop and rap, which is gangsta rap?

I think Lil Wayne is definitely a dope rapper.

Seriously, I don't consider myself a writer. I don't think I have writing talent. But I will continue to do it.

People wouldn't think of making avant-garde cuisine at home. When people play basketball at home, they can't play like Michael Jordan.

You've got to remember, the older you get the slower you get. I've seen a lot of players get old ... if I can have a good season in 1972 and come back with another good one, well, that's different. I might not quit. But two bad ones back to back and staying home would be written on the wall.

Fiction writing is a twenty-four-hou r-a-day occupation. You never leave your work behind. It is always with you, and to some extent, you are always thinking about it. You don't take your work home; your work never leaves home. It lives inside you. It resides and grows and comes alive in your mind.

I think it's such open game to make fun of myself. First of all, as a white rapper you have to have an angle and not try to be ghetto or anything. You can count on one hand the white rappers that have made it.

He likes a day in the studio to end, he says, "when my knees are all skinned up and my pants are wet and my hair's off to one side and I feel like I've been in the foxhole all day. I don't think comfort is good for music. It's good to come out with skinned knuckles after wrestling with something you can't see. I like it when you come home at the end of the day from recording and someone says, "What happened to your hand?" And you don't even know. When you're in that place, you can dance on a broken ankle.

I'm enjoying [my career]. If anything I'm aware that the pressure of the first, I suppose, six or seven years I was in America - I mean that energy of having such a rapid and ascending celebrity - it's not there anymore. It's the end of that chapter and now I'm just enjoying the work probably more than I ever have and yet I'm simultaneously less attached to it I think, which is kind of a strange state of grace to be in.

Honestly, I think I've stretched a talent which is so thin it's almost transparent over a quite unbelievable term of years.

The only reason I ever thought about retiring from the front part of the camera as opposed to the back is sometimes you think, "How many roles are there for someone my age?"

I don't know if it will be my big comeback, but I think it is a statement - that I am a self-sustaining, vibrant, long-term artist, and I'm not going away! And if you don't give me credit, then the musical gods will!

Once you're finally in a place at Saturday Night Live that you're really comfortable, that's when you should probably be leaving, unfortunately. I think most people stay two or three years longer than they should, because it's very simple, the vacations are great, and you get good at what you do. It's like any job, you're like, "Oh, I know how to do this." You know it's a temporary thing, but it's easy not to walk away from. You find yourself going, "I'll leave next year, or I'll leave the year after." But it's a job you probably shouldn't be at for longer than five years, to be honest.

I knew that Jaye Davidson would not last because of that. I really liked him and thought he had incredible screen presence and talent, but I knew that he would not stay in that profession.

That is sort of the eternal question for people who go to Hollywood...what will be the straw that breaks the camel's back, and forces you to think about doing something else? When do you throw in the towel?

There are certain kinds of people who write science fiction. I think a lot of us married late. A lot of us are mama's boys. I lived at home until I was 27. But most of the writers I know in any field, especially science fiction, grew up late. They're so interested in doing what they do and in their science, they don't think about other things.

I was at home waiting for projects. I was on Parenthood and there was one season left, and I was thinking, "What's next?" I'm at this age where I'm trying to write my own script, and they sent this over and I decided to put myself on tape.

I think some of you have to go through the pain of being rejected, the pain of being attacked on television, and ultimately there are people at home who are rooting for you and are wondering why more people don't defend what they stand up for.

New York is my home and I have a particular fondness for it. I think it's a place where you can generate any kind of story wonderfully. But I also would be very happy to make a film in Paris or Rome.

I think talent is like a water table under the earth—you tap it with your effort and it comes through you.