Quotes from Questlove

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.

Music has the power to stop time. But music also keeps time.

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

When you live your life through records, the records are a record of your life.

My life's goal is to find a happy medium for sampling to be not only legal but for the right parties to benefit from it. There have to be sampling laws. The survival of hiphop is based on that.

There's no such thing as success on an isolated level.

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

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

I cannot keep a girlfriend longer than seven months. I have 12 jobs. I don't have time for my personal life. I'm fully aware that this is the sacrifice.

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.

Time will tell. Time is always telling. Time never stops telling.

Funk never dies. It is eternal. It just smells a little different from time to time.

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.

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

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

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.

Half the time, my job is basically to talk people off the ledge. It's more psychological than just me picking up some sticks and counting, "1, 2, 3, 4."

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.

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.

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.

I love traveling the States no matter what. I love traveling abroad, going to Japan and Australia. I love it. I never get tired of it.

I do count on a changing of tides. All too often, what could be a critics' darling today becomes tomorrow's target. I don't want to be too blasé about it.