Gza

“I was always interested in skateboarding, BMX bike riding, flipping, gymnastics. Anything with tumbling, turning, twisting, and extreme sports.”

“Since early childhood, I've been trying to learn all I can. Science is everything; it's not just physics. It's the way of understanding your environment, the world around you.”

“Writing is sort of like chess for me. You have to think carefully before you move, thinking, planning.”

“I don't knock material rappers, but let me hear it in a different way. How many songs do I have to hear about rims on a car? It's ridiculous. There's no substance. It's a hollow shell.”

“Live a life full of humility, gratitude, intellectual curiosity, and never stop learning.”

“I just have certain interests in different things, and they inspire me to write. I would encourage aspiring artists or MCs or rappers to be able to grab from many different sources to create your story.”

“'Liquid Swords' just represents a sharp tongue, sharp words.”

“I think artists sometimes go back to something when we never should, for many different reasons. You hear a lot of stories that make you feel good about the work and the project; sometimes you try to relive that, like, 'I want to make a part two.'”

“People say Wu-Tang makes you think too much. What's wrong with thinking?”

“Hip-hop is my vehicle for scientific enlightenment. It wasn't until my music career matured where I was exposed to science as an intellectual pursuit.”

“I like science and mathematics. When I say mathematics, I don't mean algebra or math in that sense, but the mathematics of things.”

“It's gonna sound so boring to most people. There have been times when I've been told, 'Oh, you're doing an album about physics? I hope it's not boring.' They don't get the idea. Because rappers are so one-dimensional, so narrow-minded, it comes off corny.”

“Music is forever changing.”

“When I was growing up, to be an emcee meant to write the most clever, intellectual, and wittiest rap. And that's what we did.”

“Every family argues and goes through things.”

“Our love of kung fu goes back to the Bruce Lee days in the 1970s. Outside the action, we loved the interesting, heartfelt stories and the dialogue. It was RZA's idea to draw all that in there as samples.”

“If you take a song like 'We Will, We Will Rock You,' 'You got blood on your face... ' - he's rhyming on that! And if you take the lyrics out of that song, you get a hip-hop beat. It's a rock song, though. So it's not out of my element for me to get with Black Lips.”

“A lot of artists think that to be current, you have to follow what's out there and do something that's so unlike what you normally do. It can work, but it doesn't if you chase it.”

“Most people associate Wu Tang with Staten Island or Shaolin, but actually, I'm a native of Brooklyn. I was born in Crown Heights, raised in Bedford Stuyvesant, Brownsville, and Bushwick.”

“We've done a lot of shows and a few albums without Dirty. He was a wild and crazy dude.”