Quotes from Adam Mansbach

The paradox of being in an industry where other people are usually the gatekeepers: publishers, editors - there are a lot of barriers to having control over your career. But coming out of hip-hop, the mindset was always to create your own.

If anything, I was a prodigious eater of everything that was put in front of me. That was probably the only thing my parents wouldn't complain about.

In theory, parents are supposed to empathize with one other - find common cause in the fervent desire to preserve and protect the world for the next generation, and connect on some deep, almost mystical level that those poor souls who have not experienced this kind of all-consuming love cannot possibly comprehend.

I've probably done more than a thousand interviews, and I can't remember what people asked me two months ago or two days ago.

If you're a novelist, as I am in real life, you're usually so desperate for any kind of feedback.

I like to read in the bathtub. Ideally, that bathtub would be located on a small Greek island.

I would like to think that I curse expertly - it's not something that I do without considering it. I never curse without intending to; it's not something I resort to because of inability to articulate or find the correct word.

I like to write in coffee shops in countries in which languages I do not speak are spoken. That way, you're surrounded by the buzz of humanity, but you aren't distracted by people's conversations.

As a writer, I've always been somebody who's been productive and hustled hard.

For me, graffiti writers were always the fascinating eccentrics of hip-hop culture. What they do is secretive by definition, and not remunerative in any way.

I believe that writers have a responsibility to evolve the language, whether by introducing new words or new usages. Shakespeare alone is responsible for something like 3400 words and phrases.

Graffiti writers were the most interesting people in hip hop. They were the mad scientists, the mad geniuses, the weird ones.

For me, most of the anxiety and difficulty of writing takes place in the act of not writing. It's the procrastination, the thinking about writing that's difficult.

Religious traditions are easy to lose sight of in today's marketing frenzy. Make sure you take time to gently usher your little ones into the rituals that have special meaning for you.

A good cookout ought to last at least six hours; if you haven't eaten and gotten full and gotten hungry and eaten again, you're doing something wrong.

My mother is really the person I learned to curse from. She discourages me from saying that in interviews. But it's true.

Being Jewish is a big part of my artistic sensibility and my humor... I think it gives me a certain take on the world on a literary level.

The trains were the beating heart of the New York graffiti scene.

The city fought a $300 million, 18-year war on graffiti. New York Mayor John Lindsay declared war in 1972, and the battle for the transit system came later.

You know you're a hopeless record nerd when your time travel fantasies always come around to how cool it would be to go back to 1973 and buy all the great funk and jazz and salsa records that came out that year on tiny obscure labels and are now really rare and expensive.

My approach is to treat writing very much as a job.

Sometimes, it's best to let the kids take control - and it's never too early to instill positive eating habits or self-confidence in the kitchen.

One of the pleasures of getting older and making a living the way you want to is that your social circle becomes rarified, and the people who enter have been vetted.

To be a white kid into hip-hop meant you'd sought it out and you practiced the art. Which meant dedication and diligence, as well as removing yourself at least occasionally from your own comfort zone and circumstances, and from people who looked like you.