Lupe Fiasco Quotes

The places I visit in any given week are my home, so when I'm somewhere that feels good to me, it's a real game changer. If a place causes me to have a strong reaction, be it positive or negative, it'll often find its way into my music.

I write to music, so every script I have has its own playlist. Music just opens me up to the emotions that I'm writing.

I write with music. I write scenes in movies that hopefully can earn the use of some songs that are powerful to me.

Whenever I started writing music, it just naturally led itself there. As I started to tell my story, it's where my home was. It's just a very natural choice.

It's a really big struggle for me to write a song. Songs take either 30 seconds for me to write or a year or two to piece together, depending on the song and how I'm feeling on any given day. I don't really like to write music at all unless I am completely unbothered by touring.

I prefer to write and draw in the privacy of my home and with total freedom and then take it to the lion's den.

If I come across an issue, or something I feel strongly about, and I happen to think of a song that would go in that direction, then I do it. But that's not what I start out, necessarily, to do. Sometimes I may have an idea for a song - "Well, I'm going to write about a thing.

The only way to get anything out of a writer's brains is to leave him or her alone until he or she is damn well ready to write it down.

January 8 has been a lucky day for me. I have started all my books on that day, and all of them have been well received by the readers. I write eight to ten hours a day until I have a first draft, then I can relax a little. I am very disciplined. I write in silence and solitude. I light a candle to call inspiration and the muses, and I surround myself with pictures of the people I love, dead and alive.

When I got home from The Ozzfest in September 2000 with Methods... I just locked myself in my house and I started writing.

You're always going to write and draw inspiration from things that you're feeling, things that you've felt. It's kind of impossible not to unless you're writing a song and there's an exact scenario that you're trying to write a song for.

For me, how I feel about what I wrote down turns into a song.

I try to make all my songs good. I don't ever write one to finish one. A lot of protest songs end up that way, driven by some kind of emotional response.

For 'Regulate,' I was at home, and I came up with it. I was listening to Michael McDonald's 'I Keep Forgettin'.' It was a record that I always loved, from being a kid and my parents playing it when they had their company of friends over. It was a record that just stuck in my head, and it just felt good.

I personally have never made a movie in Hollywood, because I don't want to get up in my own bed and then go to the movie set, and then come home at night to my real life.

I started as a songwriter and wanted to be like Leonard Cohen. I've always seen my stories as enlarged songs.

Some people can sit and enjoy the view... some people like to take photos to feel complete. I need to somehow possess it in some other way. I just have to somehow grasp it and take it home in a more fulsome way. It's where ideas come from.

Once you develop your own style, you know when you're able to give your best. Feeling at home is part of it, and I don't think that's an L.A. thing. It's a matter of the environment and of what affects you.

I'm not the kind of guy who sits around at home and writes songs. Once in a while I'll pick up a guitar and noodle around, but it's rare.

I always prefer shooting on locations, because when I'm at home, it's harder to sort of get lost in the world of whatever you're making. It does, it does force this bond and community amongst a group.

Whenever I'm out and I hear something, I'm writing. It's the process of writing it down and then just always creating wherever you go. I never stop creating.

It's my job to have ups and downs because it makes good music.

Anything that's really made an impact on my life, I want to get in the studio and write about it.

I've never stared out at the ocean while I've made a record before - that enhances things in a strange way.

Certainly in the case of having to answer questions about where a song comes from, it's a hell of a lot easier when you say, 'I've removed myself from it.' But they start from quite a personal place. They always do.