Top 60 Macklemore Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “I don’t control life, but I can control how i react to it.”

— Macklemore

2. “Music is therapy. Music moves people. It connects people in ways that no other medium can. It pulls heart strings. It acts as medicine.”

— Macklemore

3. “If I can be an example of getting sober, then I can be an example for starting over.”

— Macklemore

4. “Expectations are resentments waiting to happen.”

— Macklemore

5. “One man’s trash that’s another man’s come up.”

— Macklemore

6. “Whatever God you believe in, we come from the same one.”

— Macklemore

7. “A life lived for art, is never a life wasted.”

— Macklemore

8. “Just because you miss someone doesn’t mean you need them back in your life. Missing is just a part of moving on.”

— Macklemore

9. “I write to the beat and let life play the guitar strings.”

— Macklemore

10. “Strip away the fear, underneath it’s all the same love.”

— Macklemore

11. “We are what we wear, we wear what we are.”

— Macklemore

12. “We sell our dreams and our potential to escape through that buzz.”

— Macklemore

13. “I find that when I put my spiritual life first, the rest of my life is easy. When I put my career first, that’s when I have problems.”

— Macklemore

14. “Sampling is kind of prehistoric, given the technology and the textures you can create.”

— Macklemore

15. “We become so numb to what we’re saying.”

— Macklemore

16. “God loves all his children, somehow we’ve forgotten, but we paraphrase a book written thirty-five hundred years ago.”

— Macklemore

17. “The moment is now and we cant get it back from the grave.”

— Macklemore

18. “Michael Jordan was a cultural icon that everybody on the playground wanted to be. The Bulls dynasty was a huge part of my childhood and it was the peak of my basketball interest as a kid.”

— Macklemore

19. “A world so hateful some would rather die than be who they are.”

— Macklemore

20. “My relationship with God is as strong as the time and energy I put into connecting with God.”

— Macklemore

21. “And weed’s not a drug – that’s denial.”

— Macklemore

22. “Vote Love means vote equality. It means vote change. It means vote whats right for humanity.”

— Macklemore

23. “Gay rights are human rights, there is no separation.”

— Macklemore

24. “I shop at thrift shops probably five times a week.”

— Macklemore

25. “Live tonight, cuz you can’t take it with ya.”

— Macklemore

26. “I’d always thought that if I could get sober and stay sober, I would be able to have a career making music. My drug and alcohol addiction was the one thing holding me back. I had finally gotten the tools to stay sober, and it was just a matter of writing the songs.”

— Macklemore

27. “For me, being transparent about every aspect of my life is what makes my music relatable and how I’m able to be an individual amongst the mass amounts of other artists.”

— Macklemore

28. “Bullying is a national epidemic.”

— Macklemore

Featured in: Bullying Quotes

29. “If I’m using drugs and alcohol, it means that I’ve given up on my fullest potential.”

— Macklemore

30. “You need to get outside of your comfort zone to write songs that are interesting, songs that are compelling, songs that are different from what other people are writing.”

— Macklemore

31. “I can write for weeks or months sometimes and edit it down to a song. I feel like it’s a piece of music that will hopefully stand the test of time and hopefully capture a moment in history if I’m doing it correctly and honestly.”

— Macklemore

32. “When I write, I don’t have any expectation of what kind of song it will become or who it might reach.”

— Macklemore

33. “Hip-hop was started as a very egocentric, testosterone, machismo-driven art form. The way that people are trying to take away that masculinity that is a such an intrinsical part of hip-hop music.”

— Macklemore

34. “I’m as honest as I can be.”

— Macklemore

35. “I want to make music that I like; not something that I have to make because I think it’s going to sell.”

— Macklemore

36. “I don’t write a great song every day. I don’t write a great song every couple weeks. It comes in such random times.”

— Macklemore

37. “No freedom till we’re equal. Damn right I support it.”

— Macklemore

38. “The skyline is etched in my veins. You can never put that out, no matter how hard it rains.”

— Macklemore

39. “It’s been so long since I’ve really truly felt what it’s like to live life without substances to help. Massive struggle that’s natural to one’s health, but with addiction in my blood I play the cards I was dealt.”

— Macklemore

40. “I learned from my teachers but became through my music.”

— Macklemore

41. “You can only watch injustice go on for so long until you’re compelled to say something. To speak out against it.”

— Macklemore

42. “Drug culture is extremely prevalent and probably most people know somebody whose life has been affected by drugs, if it’s not their own or in their own family, they have friends. It’s a never-ending process.”

— Macklemore

43. “I wanted to get clean. I knew that my highest potential, the place that I was most spiritual, the place that I was the most rich in terms of my life, and my livelihood, and my art and my creativity, was when I was sober.”

— Macklemore

44. “Thrift shopping is really just an extension of me being that same kid and going into a place that’s completely unconventional that has really endless possibilities in terms of outfits that you can put together and really just expressing yourself.”

— Macklemore

45. “Us as rappers underestimate the power and effects that we have on these kids.”

— Macklemore

46. “I definitely use ‘smiling while rapping’ as a tool in the booth. I want to have fun while recording.”

— Macklemore

47. “I put myself in the place of the listener when editing my writing. The last thing that I want to do is be preached at and told who to be or what to think when listening to an artist. However, I do want to be inspired. There’s a fine line.”

— Macklemore

48. “I’m not more or less conscious than any other rapper out there.”

— Macklemore

49. “This moon man right here stands for a lot more. This is the most important record out of all of them. Gay rights are human rights, there is no separation.”

— Macklemore

50. “The one thing I will never do is buy a shirt because of its name, especially when it’s $600 for that shirt. To me, that’s ridiculous. It’s just a shirt; it’s not worth the money.”

— Macklemore