Eminem

It creeps me out sometimes to think of the person I was. I was a terrible person. I was mean to people.

I was a smart kid but I hated school.

The truth is you don't know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride and nothing is guaranteed.

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 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 hate women - they just sometimes make me mad.

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.

I'm stupid, I'm ugly, I'm dumb, I smell. Did I mention I'm stupid?

I've been running a lot taking care of myself.

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.

Sometimes I feel like rap music is almost the key to stopping racism.

Well I'm working all the time to stay out of trouble!

I've accomplished enough with the music that I haven't had to go out there and do other things to over-saturate.

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.

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.'

I am who I am and I say what I think. I'm not putting a face on for the record.

If there's not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.

I was poor white trash no glitter no glamour but I'm not ashamed of anything.

I didn't just invent saying offensive things.

To the people I forgot you weren't on my mind for some reason and you probably don't deserve any thanks anyway.

Honestly I never really put the mic down.

My only scheme was to be a rapper.

I try to treat all the money I'm making like it's the last time I'm going to make it.

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.

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.

Anything I've ever said I certainly was feeling at the time.

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.

A lot of truth is said in jest.

Guns are bad I tell you.

Hip hop has always been braggin' and boasting and 'I'm better at you than this' and 'I'm better at you than that.'

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.

I am whatever you say I am, if I wasn't then why would you say I am.

Ultimately who you choose to be in a relationship with and what you do in your bedroom is your business.

I always wished for this but it's almost turning into more of a nightmare than a dream.

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.

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.

Dealing with backstabbers there was one thing I learned. They're only powerful when you got your back turned.

Rap was my drug.

If you're the parent be a parent. You know what I mean? I'm a parent. I have daughters.

I feel like a spoilt rapper. I get to pick and choose everything.

I need drama in my life to keep making music.

I don't think I've ever read poetry ever.

I'm not really book-smart.

I come from Detroit where it's rough and I'm not a smooth talker.

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'm very much a creature of habit.

I need to keep working on myself for a while.

I might talk about killing people but that doesn't mean I do it.

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 realized 'Yo I can't do anything in moderation. I don't know how.'

Fame hit me like a ton of bricks.

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.

My thing is this, if I'm sick enough to think it then I'm sick enough to say it.

Before I was famous when I was just working in Gilbert's Lodge everything was moving in slow motion.

It sometimes feels like a strange movie, you know, it's all so weird that sometimes I wonder if it is really happening.

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.

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 think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.

It's just hard to meet new people in my position.

I'd go to like six different schools in one year. We were on welfare and my mom never ever worked.

It feels good to have your work respected again.

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.

The kids are old enough now - I just want to let them be kids. I don't want to comment on them too much. They're at an age where I just want to let them be kids.

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.

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.

Somewhere deep down there's a decent man in me he just can't be found.

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.

Anybody with a sense of humor is going to put on my album and laugh from beginning to end.

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.

I love the attention but I don't like too much of it.

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.

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.

These times are so hard and they're getting even harder.

My overall look on things is a lot more mature than it used to be.

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'.

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 always felt that if I was going to do a movie I wanted it to be authentic.

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.

Touring is hard on the body.

Now that I understand that I'm an addict I definitely have compassion for my mother. I get it.

My father? I never knew him. Never even seen a picture of him.

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.

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'.