“The truth is you don’t know what is going to happen tomorrow. Life is a crazy ride, and nothing is guaranteed.”
― Eminem
“Trust is hard to come by. That’s why my circle is small and tight. I’m kind of funny about making new friends.”
― Eminem
“Everybody has goals, aspirations or whatever, and everybody has been at a point in their life where nobody believed in them.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“Dealing with backstabbers, there was one thing I learned. They’re only powerful when you got your back turned.”
― Eminem
“I was poor white trash, no glitter, no glamour, but I’m not ashamed of anything.”
― Eminem
“My overall look on things is a lot more mature than it used to be.”
― Eminem
“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’.”
― Eminem
“It sometimes feels like a strange movie, you know, it’s all so weird that sometimes I wonder if it is really happening.”
― Eminem
“My thing is this; if I’m sick enough to think it, then I’m sick enough to say it.”
― Eminem
“A lot of truth is said in jest.”
― Eminem
“I’m stupid, I’m ugly, I’m dumb, I smell. Did I mention I’m stupid?”
― Eminem
“It’s just hard to meet new people, in my position.”
― Eminem
“To the people I forgot, you weren’t on my mind for some reason and you probably don’t deserve any thanks anyway.”
― Eminem
“I always say this about my music, and music in general: Music is like a time capsule. Each album reflects what I’m going through or what’s going on in my life at that moment.”
― Eminem
“Somewhere deep down there’s a decent man in me, he just can’t be found.”
― Eminem
“Throughout my career, I fed off the fuel of people not being able to understand me.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“Anything I’ve ever said, I certainly was feeling at the time.”
― Eminem
“My only scheme was to be a rapper.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“Well, I’m working all the time to stay out of trouble!”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“These times are so hard, and they’re getting even harder.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“I don’t hate women – they just sometimes make me mad.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“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?”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“I love the attention but I don’t like too much of it.”
― Eminem
“It creeps me out sometimes to think of the person I was. I was a terrible person. I was mean to people.”
― Eminem
“If there’s not drama and negativity in my life, all my songs will be really wack and boring or something.”
― Eminem
“Honestly, I never really put the mic down.”
― Eminem
“I am who I am and I say what I think. I’m not putting a face on for the record.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“Rap was my drug.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“I’d go to, like, six different schools in one year. We were on welfare, and my mom never ever worked.”
― Eminem
“I feel like a spoilt rapper. I get to pick and choose everything.”
― Eminem
“I might talk about killing people, but that doesn’t mean I do it.”
― Eminem
“Five or six songs leaked from the original version of ‘Encore.’ So I had to go in and make new songs to replace them.”
― Eminem
“I’m very much a creature of habit.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“I am whatever you say I am; if I wasn’t, then why would you say I am.”
― Eminem
“I always wished for this, but it’s almost turning into more of a nightmare than a dream.”
― Eminem
“I was a smart kid, but I hated school.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“I come from Detroit where it’s rough and I’m not a smooth talker.”
― Eminem
“I need to keep working on myself for a while.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“Fame hit me like a ton of bricks.”
― Eminem
“I realized, ‘Yo, I can’t do anything in moderation. I don’t know how.’”
― Eminem
“I think my first album opened a lot of doors for me to push the freedom of speech to the limit.”
― Eminem
“Sometimes I feel like rap music is almost the key to stopping racism.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“My father? I never knew him. Never even seen a picture of him.”
― Eminem
“I try to treat all the money I’m making like it’s the last time I’m going to make it.”
― Eminem
“I don’t know if I ever feel totally great about a record when I put it out. With every record that I put out, someone has literally got to come pry it from me because when I listen to my own music, I just hear flaws in it.”
― Eminem
“The emotions in a song – the anger, aggression – have got to be legitimate.”
― Eminem
“I’m not really book-smart.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“I didn’t have nothin’ going for me… school, home… until I found something I loved, which was music, and that changed everything.”
― Eminem
“My family has never been there for me. They expect things because we’re blood.”
― Eminem
“Before I was famous, when I was just working in Gilbert’s Lodge, everything was moving in slow motion.”
― Eminem
“I need drama in my life to keep making music.”
― Eminem
“Ultimately, who you choose to be in a relationship with and what you do in your bedroom is your business.”
― Eminem
“I don’t think I’ve ever read poetry, ever.”
― Eminem
“I always felt that if I was going to do a movie, I wanted it to be authentic.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“Guns are bad, I tell you.”
― Eminem
“I’ve been running a lot, taking care of myself.”
― Eminem
“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’.”
― Eminem
“It feels good to have your work respected again.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“If you’re the parent, be a parent. You know what I mean? I’m a parent. I have daughters.”
― Eminem
“I didn’t just invent saying offensive things.”
― Eminem
“Nothing on ‘Relapse’ and very little on ‘Recovery’ was produced by me.”
― Eminem
“When ‘Paul’s Boutique’ came out, I was one of the fans that didn’t get it.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“I’ve accomplished enough with the music that I haven’t had to go out there and do other things to over-saturate.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“Anybody with a sense of humor is going to put on my album and laugh from beginning to end.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“Now that I understand that I’m an addict, I definitely have compassion for my mother. I get it.”
― Eminem
“Touring is hard on the body.”
― Eminem
“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.’”
― Eminem
“Hip hop has always been braggin’ and boasting and ‘I’m better at you than this’ and ‘I’m better at you than that.’”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“I don’t think I’ve ever read poetry, ever. I’m not really book-smart.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
“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.”
― Eminem
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