Quotes from Mike D

I wanted to create this dialogue between music and visual art and vice versa. No matter what part of the spectrum they fill, whether it's visual, music, or whatever, artists are interested in other art forms. Your brain is already kind of firing in that way.

Each time you present a tour, you're faced with these questions of, 'How do you want to present visual information? How do you want to take the music that we're making on stage and visualize that?'

Lofts are great. But with a home, there is a lot to be said for delineated space. To have the luxury of a little separate work space is huge - and to have the dream-sequence master bath.

With '5 Boroughs,' we were each working on beats, sitting in front of our laptops and samplers.

I have an equal amount of patience as my grade-school children, which is not great.

Having to wake up at seven and go take the subway every morning, having to get over there with all these commuters and see every possible face of humanity and realizing that you're just the same as these other people is actually an amazingly positive thing.

Japan is brilliant for vinyl. There's all this rare stuff that I've been looking two years for, and you walk into a store, and you find it straight away.

We're kind of doing what Bob McAllister did with 'Wonderama,' which is making people realize that kids are people, too.

It might shock you, but I haven't been to that many fashion shows, and I'd never done a commissioned piece for a fashion house.

I don't like the George Costanza-style wallet.

I'm always careful to even guess, at any juncture, about things before we do them.

If people pay money to see you, they have to cheer. They can't boo, or else they're chumping themselves.

We just have to be careful of our actions as world citizens.

We never set out to be superstars.

To me, the whole thing with the roots of rap music was when the DJ had to supply all the music for the group with two turntables. And the whole criteria of what that DJ would use had nothing to do with what type of band made a record.

All the music I listened to in high school that I loved and that moved me wasn't the same music other kids were listening to in school. I got into punk rock and new wave, then dub and hip-hop.

Maybe some people, when they sit down to write their great novel or make their great record or paint their great painting, they have it all planned out in their head. But for me, it's never worked that way.

For me, growing up in New York, it started with Elvis Costello and the Clash and then got into louder things like Bad Brains and Stimulators, because those were, like, the local bands. Then I started getting into bands from England like the Slits. I remember seeing Gang of Four at Irving Plaza; that was a really big show for me.

I grew up with a clock radio next to my bed.

I was going to clubs in Manhattan when I was 14.

Thinking about the cold weather in England... Don't be afraid to rock the David Niven look.

I know for myself, and maybe I'm weird or whatever, but the whole thing is about constantly redefining identity.

LL Cool J is very well known in Hollywood. He's an established commodity across several platforms, including motion pictures.

I feel no compunction to defend L.A. People criticize it, and for the most part, it's well-founded.