Quotes from Goldie

We have choices in life when we're young and I think a lot of things were stacked against me.

I wasn't a nice person to meet in the back end of the 90s.

I learned everything out of children's homes. The kids had to stick together, we had to unify, and we did that, and I think that was a great thing.

I DJ'd my first pirate station from a house I broke into in Haringey.

I experienced Hip-Hop first-hand in the Bronx with the boys in New York; people like the Rock Steady Crew and The Dynamic Rockers, I looked at it for what it really was.

I grew up on Steel Pulse, Bob Marley, Public Image Ltd., Sex Pistols, The Jam and somewhere in the middle was The Specials.

Me and Wiley have got a lot in common. And not just the fact that we're both a bit nuts.

Reinvention is the biggest gift I've been given. I've gone from graffiti artist to jewellery maker, urban musician to conductor.

Urban breakbeat has become the mood of the '90s, like rap was in the '80s.

If I got hit by a bus tomorrow, you'd get people going: 'Oh, we should make 'Mother' into an opera, it's what he would have wanted.'

I use the same big studios that everybody else uses, but my attitude once inside is that of a total barbarian.

I believe that we all need to do charitable work. It should be taken seriously in the area of education, as someone from the industry.

You can be very connected, computers are great, they can get you a ticket to Venezuela in five minutes; brilliant. But if you know your music and your history, you can make that work as a tool. If you don't, you're working as a slave to it.

I love the Bay Area and I love San Fran. I don't know why I love it so much. Maybe it's the vibe, maybe it's the fault lines. Nah, there's something very special in the air out there.

I don't use producers, I am the producer. I use an engineer as a tool, vicariously.

I think albums should be dynamic, man.

I've always been a big champion of saying what we do today creates tomorrow. When you're young, you don't realise all of this stuff, and from an early age I was very conscious of what was going on in my environment.

I'm understanding theatre a bit more. I've learned that you go over and over stuff. There's a big element of back-story: where have the characters been before, where have they come from?

Childhood was abusive and horrible, I endured some stuff I don't even want to talk about. I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy.

The layers you get in graffiti, the ornateness, you can hear it in my music. I paint with my music. It's a form of synaesthesia.

I've lost friends and people that I've admired. The loss of any life is a travesty.

When you have a Jewish mother who has a very strong Jewish family, it's very ethnic in its practices. Eating brisket, the food and the family and the interconnectedness for better or worse.