Quotes About Struggle

I want to say at the outset that I have become ill, insane, as an inmate of the torture chamber behind America's fake facade of justice and democracy. But I am not as ill as I was, and I am getting better all time.

Whirly bits of confused thought stormed my mind.

It was a tragic Westside slum inhabited by poverty-mauled blacks.

I want to say at the outset that I have become ill, insane, as an inmate of the torture chamber behind America's fake facade of justice and democracy. But I am not as ill as I was, and I am getting better all the time. And also, I want to make clear that my reason for starting these notes at a point of personal anguish and suffering is that these experiences marked the end of a corrupt pimp life and were the prelude to a still mauled, but constructive new life.

The pimp game is like the watchmaker's art, it's tough. Party went through his life struggling to make a watch while wearing boxing gloves.

Junkie whores on both sides of Calumet clung to the fetid doorways and rotted stoops like painted lice to a filthy crotch.

He was just a Deep South chump driven to

A bitch aint shit without a man's good whip, & 1 monkey wont stop my show.

I was losing, page by page, the fine rules of thought and deed that I had learned in church, from Henry to the Boy Scout Troop in Rockford. I was sopping up the poison off the street like a sponge.

From the time I made my first recording in 1983, I was already telling cats like Spike, "Nah, I ain't hitting that lick." I was already sliding away from it. Then, after nearly losing my life in the car crash, I really couldn't

the criminal life seduce you. Very few people survive it.

THE FALL No matter how high I climbed, Somehow I always fell

I guess a lot of players got this story to tell No matter how cold you roll you simply cannot win It's always fun in the beginning But pain in the end —ICE, "PAIN

running down a road—this race full of other players and hustlers—and yelling at everybody to my left and right:

But when I got to what I thought was the finish line, at the end of that hustling road, there was no winning—

there was nothing but a steep cliff. And all the dudes who were hustling with me, one by one they kept falling off that cliff.

in South Central unexpectedly when I was orphaned at age twelve. I'm originally from New Jersey—born in Newark, raised in a middle-class suburb called Summit. My mother passed suddenly when I was in third grade from a heart attack. My father did his best to raise me on his own for a couple of years, but when I was in seventh

When I was eighteen, I got my girlfriend pregnant—she was still in the tenth grade—and, looking for a way to support my daughter, trying to do the responsible thing

Your ego and reality sometimes fight each other. Reality is staring you in the face, but your ego doesn't want to accept it.

had five straight gold albums—about a ten-year plateau—and then my sales just dropped off a steep fucking cliff. From being able to ship half a million records, suddenly I was only shipping

I felt that one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or rat in a trap. I had already determined to sell my life as dearly as possible if attacked. I felt if I could take one lyncher with me, this would even up the score a little bit.

one had better die fighting against injustice than to die like a dog or a rat in a trap

freedom is not given... it's taken.

Effort makes some great men famous. Even greater effort enables other great men to remain unknown.