Questlove's Quotes

Classical music requires an immense amount of concentration, and I don't know if I would've been that committed to that particular life.

During the 2008 election, I made clear to the Obama campaign that I don't think it's wise for me to force my personal political agenda on anyone.

Hip-hop is an instant gratification, winners and losers circle, and often those who are losing give up after three or four, five years.

Hip-hop is so much about character and caricature that people just see you as a character. Very rarely are you flesh and bone to people.

Hip-hop is such a disposable art form from a business standpoint. It never treats its artists as art; it never treats its product as art.

I do secret stand-up shows around New York. I announce and tweet this to nobody - I get onstage and I do a quick five minutes.

I don't have friends, and it's hard for me to make new friends. Right now, the people that are in my life are the people that I work with.

I have a lot of those 'Forrest Gump,' I-was-there moments.

I want the 'Roots' biopic to be animated - I see Charles Schulz drawing us. I think it would be more hilarious with the voices of children.

I've come to the conclusion that the average person can do about four things a day, like four real things a day.

In the 2000s, I became an artist. I started preserving and educating. I became more obsessed with making iPod playlists for people.

My first gig was at Radio City Music Hall when I was 13.

My parents were really strict about me not watching cartoons.

You know the greatest thing about working on 'Fallon?' I get so many anonymous gifts.

According to my parents, I just started drumming when I was two. I traveled with them from five to seven on the road, playing percussion. Between 8 and 12, my dad sort of prepared me by teaching me every aspect of road life.

Highlight reels are about that one person. After a barrage of highlight reels, you get the sense that you can do it without a team. But music thrived the most when groups were involved. People lose sight of that - that community makes the world run.

I believe that the only people who really, truly benefit from any of the policies of Republicans are the wealthy. I'm in that 1 percent tax bracket, but I'm not a man of wealth.

I prefer to unwind by DJing. I learned that from Mike D from the Beastie Boys. After a show, he would DJ. Once I saw that, I wanted to do that. And now DJing is like my lifeline. I love the power it represents.

I think the music comes first, then comes the fashion, and thus, the lifestyle. I believe it starts with music, and then the person delivering it delivers the lifestyle, the fashion. Madonna is a great example of that.

I would love to have some sort of 'Back To The Future' Delorean time machine travel device so I could go back to 1981 to see that very first Jackson 5 concert I went to, back when I was a kid.

I'm a 24-hour tweet machine, I'm a 24-hour blogger. When there's no pressure on me, I can talk and write and lecture with the best of them. But put a deadline on me and I start getting writer's block.

I'm not one of those people who's so blinded by my own work and my sweat. It's kind of risky writing a memoir when you're really part of a larger universe.

In terms of being a 'sneakerhead,' there was one point where I was obsessively following every sneaker blog. That's the beauty of Twitter: To get the heads up on what's coming out.

The president is just the coach of a football team. You need the right support, the right stadium, the right players, the right staff. An excellent coach is not going to win games.