Saul Williams Quotes & Sayings

I am hoping for peaceful transition into a new age. Obama has already played a great role in initiating us into that vision. If he were to be harmed in any way, it would spawn the birth of a million Obamas. — Saul Williams

I think everything has its place. So if the ideas or the fluidity isn't coming in writing, maybe it's related to ingestions. — Saul Williams

Fax me a fact, and I'll telegram a hologram. — Saul Williams

I didn't ever want to make a rap album. I considered it too limiting. Now that's exactly what I've gone and done. — Saul Williams

There is a lot of fun to be had when you try and fit as many words as you can within a three-minute song, but there is also a lot of fun in trying to get that message across in three words, or better yet when the music can overpower the words and convey something really pure and perfect ... It's as simple as wanting to lift the spirits. — Saul Williams

Intelligence is intuitive you needn't learn to love unless you've been taught to fear and hate — Saul Williams

American culture is often so self-consumed that we often think that our problems are just our problems. — Saul Williams

I dance for no reason, for reasons you can't dance,
Call me an activist of intellectualized circumstance
You can't learn my steps until you unlearn your thoughts Spirit, soul, can't be store-bought. — Saul Williams

I think that good writing is based on good reading. Maybe it's not about writing today, maybe it's about reading today. Maybe it's about finding the sort of book you would never read. — Saul Williams

this is her body this is her blood — Saul Williams

Only through new words might new worlds be called into order — Saul Williams

'Niggy Tardust' is the voice of a generation, a generation that does not define itself simply by what it's born into. — Saul Williams

Legislation won't necessarily start a riot. But the right song can make someone pick up a chair. — Saul Williams

Yes, there is a science to the aroma of sleeping women

(and to think of the girlfriend I was tempted to break up with because she slept too much)

i now know, they NURTURED here there: they slept in packs dreamt in cycles nursed her in shifts and became her ON ROTATION — Saul Williams

Pools of blood are not recreational even lifeguards drown when the undertow breaks bread with the underbelly demons disguised as sharks have not put enough thought into their costumes a wiseman stays ashore when pointed fins read like italian subtitles the end is near ( ... ) the beginning — Saul Williams

What's wrong with hip-hop is the system that controls the definition of it. There needs to be more balance on the airwaves. — Saul Williams

I surrendered my beliefs
and found myself at the tree of life
injecting my story into the veins of leaves
only to find that stories like forests
are subject to seasons — Saul Williams

I think it's misleading to think that art is only there for escapism, only there for our dreams of being rich and f - king whoever we wanna f - k. — Saul Williams

I used to have weird practices in crowded used-book stores in New York where I'd go in and just stomp my foot and see what fell from the shelf. And of course, because it's an unexpected encounter, there's always some magic that comes from it. — Saul Williams

It's not the rules everywhere, you know? That's not the rules everywhere - that things have to be dumbed down in order to become massively popular. And that hasn't always been the rule, even in America. — Saul Williams

For all the ghosts and corpses that shall never know the breath of our children
so long
for the sacrifice and endurance of our mothers and the sustained breath of our fathers
we live — Saul Williams

There is nothing more negligent than attempting to address a problem one finds on a branch than by censoring the leaves. — Saul Williams

The wind is the moon's imagination wandering. — Saul Williams

When I can feel you breathing into me i, like a stone gargoyle
atop some crumbling building,
spring to life
a resuscitated
angel. — Saul Williams

I am like a survivor
of the flood
walking through the streets
drenched with
God
surprised that all of the
drowned victims
are still walking and talking — Saul Williams

We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun.
We are not afraid of the darkness.
We trust that the moon shall guide us.
We are determining the future at this very moment.
We know that the heart is the philosopher's stone.
Our music is our alchemy. — Saul Williams

The downfall of the industry seems to actually be good for art. I think the industry will find their way once the focus shifts from its greed-based origins, downsizes, and begins to support creative visions that speak to our times and shifting ideals. — Saul Williams

The forecast is
we kiss goodbye and never hello
all kisses are then parting kisses — Saul Williams

Jay Z and President Bush have a lot in common, that same brash confidence. — Saul Williams

There is no music more powerful than hip-hop. No other music so purely demands an instant affirmative on such a global scale. When the beat drops, people nod their heads, "yes," in the same way that they would in conversation with a loved one, a parent, professor, or minister. — Saul Williams

The role that theater has placed in enhancing consciousness and moving systems ahead. I think of what South African theater meant for the apartheid movement, for example. I think of what music has meant for so many social movements across time. — Saul Williams

The most powerful political voices are those with a different way of seeing and processing the world and the sounds that emanate from it. — Saul Williams

Books are carefully folded forests/void of autumn/bound from the sun — Saul Williams

The organization of self, and all self-aligning principles would be those that I promote. — Saul Williams

You change the beat up, you might change the way people dance to the music. If you change the way they move, maybe they'll think about it differently. — Saul Williams

I think we fool ourselves and really negate a great deal of history if we think that the oral history of poetry is shorter than the written history of poetry. It's not true. Poetry has a longer oral tradition than it does written. — Saul Williams

The anchor man thrown overboard has simply rooted us in history's repeating cycle — Saul Williams

The MC that we love are usually the ones that we consider be kinda heartless, like 50 Cent. That's pretty much the prowess and power of an MC. That's what sells. — Saul Williams

Some rather seek up high
Than dig and grind that inner truth — Saul Williams

I feel that people need to be jolted out of their comfort zones. — Saul Williams

When I look at certain aspects of popular culture - not everything because I like a lot of things - sometimes my heart breaks a little bit, just a little bit. I begin to ponder what happened to this generation, I don't know. — Saul Williams

There's so much to be found in literature, especially if you don't have the money to travel or the means to get out of your neighborhood or get off work. — Saul Williams

My love is my soul's imagination ...
how do I love you ... imagine. — Saul Williams

The greatest Americans have not been born yet they are waiting patiently for the past to die. — Saul Williams

I hear the weed is really strong in California ... — Saul Williams

We claim the present as the pre-sent, as the hereafter. We are unraveling our navels so that we may ingest the sun.
We are not afraid of the darkness, we trust that the moon shall guide us.
We are determining the future at this very moment. We now know that the heart is the philosophers' stone. Our music is our alchemy. We stand as the manifested equivalent of 3 buckets of water and a hand full of minerals, thus realizing that those very buckets turned upside down supply the percussion factor of forever ... — Saul Williams

The wind plays the world like an instrument. Blows through trees like flutes. But trees won't grow in cement. And as heart beats bring percussion fallen trees bring repercussions. Cities play upon our souls like broken drums. — Saul Williams

I've never believed it's really so important that you conform to the ways of the system in order to beat the system. I think that the system follows a great deal. — Saul Williams

The only reason I've been so critical of hip-hop is because I've always been aware of the effect that it has, and the reflection that it gives of the African-American community. — Saul Williams

More people than ever are slowly but surely turning their ears toward poetry. — Saul Williams

I have offered myself to the inkwell of the wordsmith that I might be shaped into new terms of being. — Saul Williams

Hip-hop is too young to put a definition on it. — Saul Williams

A lie preserved in stained glass doesn't make it more true. — Saul Williams

I spend my time sitting in train stations, parks, parking lots, cafes, just looking at people - eavesdropping, basically. I'm vulnerable to all of it. — Saul Williams

I've always been inspired by a lot of work coming out of the UK. — Saul Williams

I'm hip to their game, hip to the science of war
Propoganda makes me fight but what am I fightin for?
My way of life? Beans and rice? Give and take, less or more?
See through the eyes of the poor, plus I'm black to the core
Ignorance is on tour bookin stadiums and more
The days of hitler painted pictures patriotic before
You raise your flag on a land snatched from bald eagles claw, and stamp the symbol on your currency to finance your war.
I'm sayin no.
Not in my name.
Not in my life.
Not by my hands.
That ain't my fight.
Not in my name.
You wage your war against terrorists and violence, and try to wave your guns and fear us all into silence.
NO. — Saul Williams

I have a very family-like connection to hip-hop, which is why it frustrates me so much. — Saul Williams

I stand on the corner of the block slinging
amethyst rocks. Drinkin 40's of mother
earth's private nectar stock. Dodgin cops.
'Cause Five-O be the 666 and I need a fix
of that purple rain. The type of shit that
drives membranes insane. Oh yeah, I'm in
the fast lane. Snorting candy yams. That free
my body and soul and send me like Shazaam!
Never question who I am. God knows.
And I know God, personally. In fact, he
lets me call him me. I be one with rain
and stars and things, with dancing feet
and watermelon wings. I bring the
sunshine and the moon. And wind blows
my tune. — Saul Williams

She stuck a bookmark in his heart and walked away. — Saul Williams

Punk rock meditation, that's what keeps it going. That's how I let go, you know. It's exactly what I do, I blast it and run around crazy banging my head on the wall. — Saul Williams

You can travel through literature, and you can expand your mind through literature. It's so cheap to buy that kind of ticket. — Saul Williams

Vulnerability is power. — Saul Williams

I don't really believe in writer's block or anything like that. If I'm not feeling words, I may pick up an instrument and play with sounds or delve into different types of creativity and expression. — Saul Williams

Dying is something you have no control over. Why waste your life being afraid of it? — Saul Williams

I don't trust the man
that i am becoming
he seems too much
and seldom is — Saul Williams

I think that the heart is a lot like those wonderful fruit, like coconut and mangoes, you know, you have to break the skin, you have to break it open to get to the good part. — Saul Williams

I was fed by the music I listened to as a kid. Hip-hop fed me psychologically, spiritually, politically. I learned from that music. — Saul Williams

The hero is the person who's afraid to run away. — Saul Williams

I think that heartbreak is a good thing. — Saul Williams

Come, my love, we have oceans to sail. — Saul Williams

You start to realize connections between experiences and things that push your buttons, and things that have touched you in those vulnerable areas and what-have-you. And they form a little collection over time - at least I do - and as time progresses and new things are learned, you kind of sift through those things until they're air or danceable, you know? But they start as this thing that's either too hard or too soft to dance to. — Saul Williams

Talk to strangers
when the family fails and friends lead you astray
when Buddha laughs and Jesus weeps and it turns out God is gay.
'Cause angels and messiahs love can come in many forms:
in the hallways of your projects, or the fat girl in your dorm,
and when you finally take the time to see what they're about
perhaps you find them lonely or their wisdom trips you out. — Saul Williams

They say that I am a poet I wonder what they would say if they saw me from the inside I bottle emotions and place them into the sea for others to unbottle on distant shores I am unsure as to whether they ever reach and for that matter as to whether I ever get my point across or my love — Saul Williams

When I finally decide that I'm ready to get out of bed, it could be the sunlight, it could be the fact that I'm awake, and, OK, first of all, I wake up in the morning because I have to go to the bathroom. — Saul Williams

Art can play a major role. I look at art as an alternative source of energy, the same way we might look at wind or solar or lithium batteries. — Saul Williams

I'm a very sensitive person at times. Not just to words that anybody says, but in relationships for example, the people that you open up to, you listen to, you hear - you know? So a lot of times, the key to some of my vulnerability is just through things, simple things - or critiques or whatever - or could be very simple things that are said. — Saul Williams

You can't do anything that's not political in this time and age. — Saul Williams

Art itself is underserved when we don't realize the power of it. — Saul Williams

My father's a preacher, my mother's a teacher, thus ... I rhyme. — Saul Williams

Why shouldn't rap be esoteric, able to take in current events, history and criticism? I guess it's this old idea of containment - that rappers, because they're black, can't and shouldn't aspire to look outside the ghetto for influence. — Saul Williams

I think it's a mistake where rap music is these days. It doesn't seem to be able to look out of the ghetto and that's ultimately unfortunate, because it defines our limitations. — Saul Williams

Who me? I play scales. The scales of
dead fish of oil-slicked seas. My sister
blows wind through the hollows of fallen
trees. And we are the echoes of eternity.
Maybe you've heard of us.
We do rebirths, revolts, and resurrections. — Saul Williams

Have you ever lost yourself in a kiss? I mean pure psychedelic inebriation. Not just lustful petting but transcendental metamorphosis when you became aware that the greatness of this being was breathing into you. Licking the sides and corners of your mouth, like sealing a thousand fleshy envelopes filled with the essence of your passionate being and then opened by the same mouth and delivered back to you, over and over again - the first kiss of the rest of your life. A kiss that confirms that the universe is aligned, that the world's greatest resource is love, and maybe even that God is a woman. With or without a belief in God, all kisses are metaphors decipherable by allocations of time, circumstance, and understanding — Saul Williams

We cannot continually barricade ourselves under some falsified idea of race, because our idea of blackness and race is simply reactionary. Africans didn't walk around Africa being black and proud, they walked around proud. — Saul Williams

I laced my shoes with sorrow
and walked a weary road
dead end streets
don't come undone
with double knots
wing tipped shoes
that walk on air
through vacant lots — Saul Williams

I remember back in the day when Chuck D called hip-hop the 'black people's CNN.' Well now, hip-hop is more like Fox News. It's biased, and highly suspect. — Saul Williams

She stuck a bookmark in my heart and walked away — Saul Williams

It was always important to me to be that kid who could rock the party as well as rock the English professor's mind. — Saul Williams

I was always making up rhymes. But I never thought that poetry would become my life. — Saul Williams

If you feel something, you should do it. — Saul Williams

Your library teacher would say, "What happens to a generation that doesn't read the Classics?" Me, I'm not your library teacher. But I have some of the same questions and concerns, you know? — Saul Williams

She, the first-born daughter of water, faced
darkness and smiled. Took mystery as her
lover and raised light as her child. Man that
shit was wild. You should have seen how
they ran. She woke up in an alley with a gun
in her hand. Tupac in lotus form, Ennis' blood
on his hands. — Saul Williams

The music aids the message, it's there to punctuate and abbreviate and shape the silence. — Saul Williams

I am no earthling. I drink moonshine on Mars
and mistake meteors for stars 'cause I can't hold
my liquor. But I can hold my breath and ascend
like wind to the black hole and play galaxophones
on the fire escape of your soul. — Saul Williams

If not then you must be trying to hear us and in such cases we cannot be heard. We remain in the darkness, unseen. In the center of unpeeled bananas, we exist. Uncolored by perception. Clothed to the naked eye. Five senses cannot sense the fact of our existence. And that's the only fact. In fact, there are no facts. — Saul Williams

Half of the popcorn sh-t that's out there, we know it's popcorn. But we're like, "It's my guilty pleasure." I feel like we have more guilty pleasure than actual f - kin' pleasure. — Saul Williams

I have an acquired taste for language, yet it is seldom an actual focus of mine. — Saul Williams

Sometimes our thoughts and feelings are our most prized possessions ... and then there are times to let go of your possessions and wander. — Saul Williams

I keep trying to forget, but I must remember. And gather the scattered continents of a self, once whole. Before they plant flags and boundary my destiny. Push down the watered mountains that blemish this soiled soul before the valleys of my conscience get the best of me. I'll need a passport just to simply reach the rest of me. A vaccination for a lesser god's bleak history. — Saul Williams

Music has always pushed ahead social movements and can do much more than just dumb down a populace. — Saul Williams