Top 60 Questlove Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “How do you plan a rebirth? I’m not sure you do. You just stand in the darkness until you can’t endure it any long, and then you move forward until you’re standing in the light.”

— Questlove

2. “All we sell is the Greatest feeling on Earth.”

— Questlove

3. “I hate holidays because it’s the quietest; it’s the most deafening sound in my apartment.”

— Questlove

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

— Questlove

5. “In terms of being a ‘sneakerhead,’ there was one point where I was obsessively following every sneaker blog. That’s the beauty of Twitter: To get the heads up on what’s coming out.”

— Questlove

6. “The president is just the coach of a football team. You need the right support, the right stadium, the right players, the right staff. An excellent coach is not going to win games.”

— Questlove

7. “There’s no such thing as success on an isolated level.”

— Questlove

8. “It’s a funny word, persistence. It means not giving up, but it also means just passing on through time.”

— Questlove

9. “I keep moving through time and time keeps moving through me. And through that process, life takes shape. The question is what shape it is. I’m not the first person to ask that question, or to see how absurd it is to think there’s a real answer. Maybe life’s a circle...”

— Questlove

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

— Questlove

11. “I’m not one of those people who’s so blinded by my own work and my sweat. It’s kind of risky writing a memoir when you’re really part of a larger universe.”

— Questlove

12. “I have a lot of those ‘Forrest Gump,’ I-was-there moments.”

— Questlove

13. “My theory is that nine times out of ten, if there’s a depression, more a social depression than anything, it brings out the best art in black people. The best example is, Reagan and Bush gave us the best years of hiphop.”

— Questlove

14. “We have to get back to “we.” It’s important to get back to “we” not just “I.””

— Questlove

15. “Hip-hop is such a disposable art form from a business standpoint. It never treats its artists as art; it never treats its product as art.”

— Questlove

16. “The only mofos in my circle are people that I can learn from.”

— Questlove

17. “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.”

— Questlove

18. “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.”

— Questlove

19. “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.”

— Questlove

20. “I don’t believe in good music and bad music anymore. I’m through with that phase of my life. Sometimes I just wanna feel good, so I put on a good record. But mostly I’m more of a businessman than a music fan, so I’m listening to music in terms of, is this effective or not effective?”

— Questlove

21. “Kurt Cobain represents a very legit, realistic outlook. Before that, in my head, to be a white artist was to be privileged.”

— Questlove

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

— Questlove

23. “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.””

— Questlove

24. “I prefer to unwind by DJing. I learned that from Mike D from the Beastie Boys. After a show, he would DJ. Once I saw that, I wanted to do that. And now DJing is like my lifeline. I love the power it represents.”

— Questlove

25. “I don’t think crack happened by accident. I’m part conspiracy theorist, because you can’t develop something that dangerous and have it not be planned.”

— Questlove

26. “I’ve come to the conclusion that the average person can do about four things a day, like four real things a day.”

— Questlove

27. “I feel like the downfall of any person is the second an artist starts celebrating their work themselves, that becomes problematic.”

— Questlove

28. “Part of me would just like to relax and have one job that pays me the amount I need to survive. And another part of me wants the creativity that comes out of struggle and frustration and fear. It’s a never-ending cycle, which must be how I want it, on some level.”

— Questlove

29. “Classical music requires an immense amount of concentration, and I don’t know if I would’ve been that committed to that particular life.”

— Questlove

30. “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.”

— Questlove

31. “After 2001, everyone in the Soulquarians blew up, which wasn’t expected. We all got the success, and then everybody froze.”

— Questlove

32. “Switching off perfection switched on the human quality.”

— Questlove

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

— Questlove

34. “Working with the artist elite can be like banging your head against the wall.”

— Questlove

35. “I really appreciate when people use their fame and their voice for more than just self-promotion, starting a dialogue about a topic or an issue much bigger than themselves.”

— Questlove

36. “And even though people like to furrow their brow like they suspect you’re not being honest about yourself, the truth is that they worry that you’re not serving their idea of you.”

— Questlove

37. “I’ve always been a lover of hoodies. I’m a guy that travels a lot. I’m a guy that spends a lot of time on a cold air-conditioned tour bus. I’m a guy that likes to watch movies in peace. I’m a guy that likes to travel in the airport in peace.”

— Questlove

38. “It’s easy for me to say, “Oh yeah, that’s the self-saboteur move that most artists pull whenever they’re afraid.””

— Questlove

39. “Reagan’s neglect of the inner city is responsible for hiphop. Hiphop is created thanks to the conditions that crack set: easy money but a lot of work, the violence involved, the stories it produced. Crack helped birth hiphop.”

— Questlove

40. “I never want to get to that level of poverty where taking a bath has to be a hot-pot experience.”

— Questlove

41. “Just because the laws were changed doesn’t mean that the attitudes have changed.”

— Questlove

42. “It’s funny, I can see the science in how music is made with other artists, but it’s hard for me to dissect my own thing.”

— Questlove

43. “Jay-Z is a dude that can give you a hundred ‘Simpsons’ quotes, like, ‘What you know about the monorail?’”

— Questlove

44. “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.”

— Questlove

45. “To be hip-hop is much more than just rapping in the production. It is more in the attitude.”

— Questlove

46. “I believe that the only people who really, truly benefit from any of the policies of Republicans are the wealthy. I’m in that 1 percent tax bracket, but I’m not a man of wealth.”

— Questlove

47. “I was born at a very crucial time. I consider 1968 to be the Mason Dixon line between pre- and post-civil rights generation ideas, whereas a lot of people born before ’68 they kind of went into that Moses mentality. Like, I’m not going to make it, you know, I don’t have any hope.”

— Questlove

48. “For anyone that’s ever had a musical breakthrough in their career, it’s always followed by the departure period right after.”

— Questlove

49. “I don’t bask in the awards I’ve won, read my bank statements, I refuse. To me, that’s how you start losing the hunger.”

— Questlove

50. “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.”

— Questlove