Quotes from El-P

I guess there are a lot of writers out there who get really inspired when they're depressed. I can't write about being depressed until I'm happy. That's all there is to it. I need space.

I had a boom box with a dual cassette deck and a mic, so I used to make pause tapes. I think a lot of people started like that because it was all I had. I would just take rap records that I liked and just loop the beat by pressing pause and record and make, like, five minutes of these beats.

I've been listening to this group called the Veils, which I kind of discovered late. I've been really obsessed with this album that they have called 'Nux Vomica,' and I just think it's a brilliantly produced and written rock record.

The thing about hip-hop producers, and the thing about hip-hop musicians, is that we listen to everything. And we're inspired by everything. I'd say even more so than any other genre of music.

You can always get something cool out of a collaboration - you can always have a moment - but meeting someone that you want to collaborate with continuously, that's a different thing.

A lot of the attitude I used to have about being from New York when I was younger just disappeared when I started to the rest of the world.

One of the reasons why I thought it was a good decision to put Def Jux on hold is that it's a hell of a lot easier to dismiss something as a movement than to dismiss individuals making good records.

Oh my god what am I doing with my life?

I'm not that prolific in terms of making my own music.

You don't know what it feels like to have someone go to bat for you until you really need it, and they do.

I have a tendency to dip my foot in self-destructive behavior.

I really only put stuff out when I have something to say and I feel like I've got a direction and I've got an idea - and that can even take two, two-and-a-half years to flesh out.

Some of the music I made for 'Fantastic Damage' I thought I was making for the Company Flow album, but the majority of it was post-Company Flow.

I think you get to a certain point in your life and where you grew up stops reminding you of when you grew up. Everything changes, everything metamorphosizes.

I was raised by women. The men in my life were either not there or not good when they were there.

I've never had a huge collection of records; I've never been a beat digga. I never been one of these guys who drives cross-country and knows some one-legged sailor who has a boat parked off some pier with a thousand Russian funk records that he stole from the Red Army in 1972.

There's nothing worse than being shackled by some miniscule sort of technology you have onstage, and I think your mettle is going to get tested in those moments.

I just like heavy music in general - from heavy rock and heavy metal and heavy rap and heavy everything. I've always been attracted to it.

There's something in the German language that makes you feel like you're getting a hug and a backstab at the same time.

There's always stuff to rebel against.

Personally more so than shock, I think, rap music has to be born of rebellion.

When I'm not feeling something, I have a very hard time doing it.

I don't necessarily think the way people do, but that's not my problem. My problem is not to reinforce or destroy any ideas anyone might have about me, how I do what I do, what my intentions are, the way that I do it. My only job, as far as I can see, is to do the music that I want to do.

If you live in a crowded area of Brooklyn or Manhattan, having a car is a hindrance. It doesn't even make sense. I basically grew up all my life without a car.