Eminem Quotes
Rapper, Songwriter
Somewhere deep down there's a decent man in me, he just can't be found.
I am who I am and I say what I think. I'm not putting a face on for the record.
Dealing with backstabbers, there was one thing I learned. They're only powerful when you got your back turned.
I am whatever you say I am; if I wasn't, then why would you say I am.
I say what I want to say and do what I want to do. There's no in between. People will either love you for it or hate you for it.
I'm stupid, I'm ugly, I'm dumb, I smell. Did I mention I'm stupid?
The truth is you don't know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed.
These times are so hard, and they're getting even harder.
A lot of truth is said in jest.
Trust is hard to come by. That's why my circle is small and tight. I'm kind of funny about making new friends.
I was a smart kid, but I hated school.
If people take anything from my music, it should be motivation to know that anything is possible as long as you keep working at it and don't back down.
Sometimes I feel like rap music is almost the key to stopping racism.
My father? I never knew him. Never even seen a picture of him.
People can try to reinvent themselves. I don't think you can really change who you are, though, because who you are is pretty much where you came from and what you've done up to now.
The writing process, the way I go about it is I do whatever the beat feels like, whatever the beat is telling me to do. Usually when the beat comes on, I think of a hook or the subject I want to rap about almost instantly. Within four, eight bars of it playing I'm just like, 'Oh, OK. This is what I wanna do'.
To the people I forgot, you weren't on my mind for some reason and you probably don't deserve any thanks anyway.
My thing is this; if I'm sick enough to think it, then I'm sick enough to say it.
Everybody has goals, aspirations or whatever, and everybody has been at a point in their life where nobody believed in them.
It sometimes feels like a strange movie, you know, it's all so weird that sometimes I wonder if it is really happening.
Guns are bad, I tell you.
I don't hate women - they just sometimes make me mad.
Why is it so hard for people to believe that white people are poor?! I wouldn't say I lived in a ghetto; I'd say I lived in the 'hood. The same friends I had back then are the same people on tour with me now.
I want to solidify as an artist and show that as I grow as a person and make mistakes and learn from them, I'm going to grow artistically.
Nobody likes to fail. I want to succeed in everything I do, which isn't much. But the things that I'm really passionate about, if I fail at those, if I'm not successful, what do I have?
I do say things that I think will shock people. But I don't do things to shock people. I'm not trying to be the next Tupac, but I don't know how long I'm going to be on this planet. So while I'm here, I might as well make the most of it.
I come from Detroit where it's rough and I'm not a smooth talker.
I always wished for this, but it's almost turning into more of a nightmare than a dream.
I was poor white trash, no glitter, no glamour, but I'm not ashamed of anything.
Fame hit me like a ton of bricks.
Anybody with a sense of humor is going to put on my album and laugh from beginning to end.
You know, not to sound corny or nuthin', but I felt like a fighter comin' up, man. I felt like, you know, I'm being attacked for this reason or that reason, and I gotta fight my way through this.
Throughout my career, I fed off the fuel of people not being able to understand me.
My overall look on things is a lot more mature than it used to be.
Honestly, I'd love to be remembered as one of the best to ever pick up a mic, but if I'm doing my part to lessen some racial tension I feel good about what I'm doing.
It'd be stupid for me to sit here and say that there aren't kids who look up to me, but my responsibility is not to them. I'm not a baby sitter.
Say there's a white kid who lives in a nice home, goes to an all-white school, and is pretty much having everything handed to him on a platter - for him to pick up a rap tape is incredible to me, because what that's saying is that he's living a fantasy life of rebellion.
I was going to McDonald's and Taco Bell every day. The kids behind the counter knew me - it wouldn't even faze them. Or I'd sit up at Denny's or Big Boy and just eat by myself. It was sad. I got so heavy that people started to not recognize me.
Personally, I just think rap music is the best thing out there, period. If you look at my deck in my car radio, you're always going to find a hip-hop tape; that's all I buy, that's all I live, that's all I listen to, that's all I love.
I always try to be smart. I try to treat all the money I'm making like it's the last time I'm going to make it.
If there's not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.
When you're a little kid, you don't see color, and the fact that my friends were black never crossed my mind. It never became an issue until I was a teenager and started trying to rap.
I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.
Before I was famous, when I was just working in Gilbert's Lodge, everything was moving in slow motion.
The album requires a certain focus of mine that I can't really explain - let's just say it's all I can really do while I'm doing it.
I need drama in my life to keep making music.
Sporadic thoughts will pop into my head and I'll have to go write something down, and the next thing you know I've written a whole song in an hour.
I love the attention but I don't like too much of it.
I want to keep making records as long as I can, but I don't know how long you can be taken seriously in rap.
You know, fame is a funny thing, man, especially, you know, actors, musicians, rappers, rock singers, it's kind of a lifestyle and it's easy to get caught up in it - you go to bars, you go to clubs, everyone's doing a certain thing... It's tough.
I'm very much a creature of habit.
I don't even know how to speak up for myself, because I don't really have a father who would give me the confidence or advice. And if you're always the new kid, you never get a chance to adapt, so your confidence is just zilch.
There was a while when I was feeling like, 'Damn, if I'd just been born black, I would not have to go through all this'.
You're not going to say anything about me that I'm not going to say about myself. There's so many things that I think about myself; if someone really wanted to get at me, they could say this and this and this. So I'm going to say it before they can. It's the best policy for me.
I might talk about killing people, but that doesn't mean I do it.
I need to keep working on myself for a while.
Certainly I'm not going to sit on the Internet all day and read what Sam from Iowa is saying about me. But I'm a sponge. I've always been a sponge.
I try to treat all the money I'm making like it's the last time I'm going to make it.
I realized, 'Yo, I can't do anything in moderation. I don't know how.'
I didn't just invent saying offensive things.
Hip-hop saved my life, man. It's the only thing I've ever been even decent at. I don't know how to do anything else.
When Bugs Bunny walks into rehab, people are going to turn and look. People at rehab were stealing my hats and pens and notebooks and asking for autographs. I couldn't concentrate on my problem.
If you're the parent, be a parent. You know what I mean? I'm a parent. I have daughters.
I don't think I've ever read poetry, ever.
There was certainly, like, a rebellious, like, youthful rage in me. And there was also the fact of no getting away from fact that I am white, and you know, this is predominantly black music, you know.
Touring is hard on the body.
Anything I've ever said, I certainly was feeling at the time.
As for my stuff, I'm just doing guest verses for other people's records. I try to stay recording, because if I don't, I get rusty.
The emotions in a song - the anger, aggression - have got to be legitimate.
I don't think I ever thought of myself as Superman. But there were people who thought of me that way, and maybe I believed them a little.
My only scheme was to be a rapper.
Rap was my drug.
Hip hop has always been braggin' and boasting and 'I'm better at you than this' and 'I'm better at you than that.'
A lot of the problems I had with fame I was bringing on myself. A lot of self-loathing, a lot of woe-is-me. Now I'm learning to see the positive side of things, instead of, like, 'I can't go to Kmart. I can't take my kids to the haunted house.'
Being a student of hip-hop in general, you take technical aspects from places. You may take a rhyme pattern or flow from Big Daddy Kane or Kool G Rap.
I felt like I had a really bad case of writer's block... Music is so therapeutic for me that if I can't get it out, I start feeling bad about myself - a lot of self-loathing.
I'd go to, like, six different schools in one year. We were on welfare, and my mom never ever worked.
A lot of my rhymes are just to get chuckles out of people. Anybody with half a brain is going to be able to tell when I'm joking and when I'm serious.
Honestly, I never really put the mic down.
It's just hard to meet new people, in my position.
My family has never been there for me. They expect things because we're blood.
It creeps me out sometimes to think of the person I was. I was a terrible person. I was mean to people.
It feels good to have your work respected again.
Hip-hop is ever changing but you'll always have the pack. And you'll always have those people who are separated from the pack.
Ultimately, who you choose to be in a relationship with and what you do in your bedroom is your business.
Music is so therapeutic for me that if I can't get it out, I start feeling bad about myself - a lot of self-loathing.
I feel like a spoilt rapper. I get to pick and choose everything.
The details surrounding both my marriage and subsequent filing for divorce are private, and I had hoped to keep them that way for the sake of my family.
I stopped watching TV because of 'The Wire.' Like, 'The Wire' ruined everything for me because I don't even want to watch anything else now.
Yeah, I did see where the people dissing me were coming from. But, it's like, anything that happened in the past between black and white, I can't really speak on it, because I wasn't there. I don't feel like me being born the color I am makes me any less of a person.
I've accomplished enough with the music that I haven't had to go out there and do other things to over-saturate.
I have a slight bit of OCD, I think. I'm not walking around flipping light switches. But when I say I'm going to do something, I have to do it.
Five or six songs leaked from the original version of 'Encore.' So I had to go in and make new songs to replace them.
When 'Paul's Boutique' came out, I was one of the fans that didn't get it.
It's kind of like a challenge to myself to be able to hear somebody else's hook and kind of interpret the words. Because my own hooks, I already know what I mean when I write them.
I didn't have nothin' going for me... school, home... until I found something I loved, which was music, and that changed everything.
I don't even know how to speak up for myself, because I don't really have a father who would give me the confidence or advice.
I've been running a lot, taking care of myself.
I don't think I've ever read poetry, ever. I'm not really book-smart.
I'm not really book-smart.