Lupe's Quotes

#1. Lupe's language was incomprehensible - what came out of her mouth didn't even sound like Spanish.

John Irving

#2. Lupe's language is just a little different," Juan Diego was saying. "I can understand it.

John Irving

#3. But Lupe both genuinely worshiped Our Lady of Guadalupe and fiercely doubted her; Lupe's doubt was borne by the child's judgmental sense that Guadalupe had submitted to the Virgin Mary - that Guadalupe was complicitous in allowing Mother Mary to be in control.

John Irving

#4. This game wears on you. It tears you down. It's perpetual motion for some people who've achieved a level of independence, like Madonna and Jay-Z - they don't need to do music anymore. But there's people who need it. And in that need, that's when it's tough and it tears you to pieces.

Lupe Fiasco

#5. I love Obama, and I love the fact that it's a black president of the United States of America, but he's not the first black president. Robert Mugabe is a black president, too, so let's not get to talking about precedents being set.

Lupe Fiasco

#6. People say, 'If you don't vote, then you don't have a right to say anything. But nine times outta 10, I pay more taxes than they do - so even if I don't vote, I still have the right to speak out.

Lupe Fiasco

#7. Obama came in and gave $700 billion to the bankers off the top as opposed to giving $700 billion to the poor.

Lupe Fiasco

#8. We've done shows - we'll be in Dublin, and it will be nonstop pandemonium to the point where you think the crowd is going to implode, because they're making so much noise and they're so excited.

Lupe Fiasco

#9. I have so many miles and I've been flying for so long that every time I fly, it's first class. It's one of those things that, if I needed to jump on a plane, and fly to Spain tomorrow, I know I could get it done. Just like that.

Lupe Fiasco

#10. If you feel comfortable, and you feel happy, and successful at your job, then that's success. You define that as success, then that's success. Success is not a general thing. It's a personal thing. It's a personal attribute.

Lupe Fiasco

#11. There's already been black presidents who've been corrupt, so it doesn't strike me that having a black man in office means he's going to be the Messiah.

Lupe Fiasco

#12. The story of 'Lasers' is my story. I didn't have to look too far to get subject matter for this record; it was stuff that was happening to me.

Lupe Fiasco

#13. I'm just trying to do the opposite of left, as long as there's the opposite of death, ya know
Yes, ya test and I just might bring the opposite of life, til' there's no one the opposite of right

Lupe Fiasco

#14. I was born Muslim, but for a large part of my life, I wasn't necessarily raised Muslim. My father always kept everything around us, from Western philosophy to Eastern philosophy.

Lupe Fiasco

#15. A match made in heaven set the fires in hell..

Lupe Fiasco

#16. My problem is I'm peaceful, and I believe in the people.

Lupe Fiasco

#17. All the big revolutions, whether it's the Industrial Revolution, the Arab Spring, those changes happened by economic and social shifts brought about by the people's voices, and those things weren't voted for. Most of our changes today are brought about through technology, not by voting.

Lupe Fiasco

#18. It's not about mainstream global domination. I make clothes that I can't find. I made a few pieces and Lupe Fiasco bought a pair of trousers I'd made, and a few other artists picked some up.

Ian Astbury

#19. The truth is limitless in its range, if you drop the T and look at it in reverse it could hurt.

Lupe Fiasco

#20. There weren't so many transvestite prostitutes in Oaxaca in those days; Flor really stood out, and not only because she was tall. She was almost beautiful; what was beautiful about her truly wasn't affected by the softest-looking trace of a mustache on her upper lip, though Lupe noticed it.

John Irving

#21. I do this for the sake of myself. It's a selfish process. I don't really have any expectations from anyone for your comments or your reviews or your previews.

Lupe Fiasco

#22. I don't think that politics are as complex as people like to make them seem or out to be.

Lupe Fiasco

#23. Most things that are politically right are morally wrong

Lupe Fiasco

#24. The world brought me to my knees, what have you brung you?

Lupe Fiasco

#25. I just downloaded '1984' for my iPod, but I've read that before. It just hearkens back to the 'romance' of my high-school days. I really liked the space I was in when I was reading it.

Lupe Fiasco

#26. I love her (Lucifer), with all my heart. She said that she would give me greatness, status, placement above the others.

Lupe Fiasco

#27. That should be the measure of success for everyone. It's not money, it's not fame, it's not celebrity; my index of success is happiness.

Lupe Fiasco

#28. The point of Islam is to promote peace.

Lupe Fiasco

#29. I think there's a lot of the hip-hop crowd behind Barack Obama because he's a black man. Honestly, I'm rooting for Hillary because race is only going to go so far. All the presidents are men at the end of the day.

Lupe Fiasco

#30. Your child's future was the first to go with budget cuts.

Lupe Fiasco

#31. Time is up for my little caravan kingdom. It's time for a window that does not look into concrete.

Leanne Hall

#32. If you want to relate me to the newer cats, let's go. Let's go line for line and bar for bar. If it's all about spitting and metaphors and MCing and lyrics and entendres, I will eat 99 percent of you dudes up.

Lupe Fiasco

#33. Some people are the greatest people on Earth with good hearts and will get in the studio and make the most negative music in the world for the sake of success. That's what the music business does to you. That's what capitalism does to you.

Lupe Fiasco

#34. For me, I never wore my religion on my sleeve, you know what I'm saying? I never put myself out there as Lupe Fiasco, he's Muslim, he's from Chicago, he likes to ride a skateboard.

Lupe Fiasco

#35. I definitely want to work with Thom Yorke. I want to work with Damien Marley; there's a few international artists I wouldn't mind working with - like Massacre Children would be ill, and I still have an affinity for the U.K. hip hop scene.

Lupe Fiasco

#36. Takes a long time to happen so fast ...
To realize that your future is somebody else's past

Lupe Fiasco

#37. The only person who really impressed me with making new music is Cudi. Everyone else seems to be jumping on the same music, the producer-made stuff, but the one person that's made new music to me is Cudi.

Lupe Fiasco

#38. No es buen momento para un terremoto," Lupe used to say. "It's not a good moment for an earthquake.

John Irving

#39. After 'Dexter' and 'La Lupe', I would love to return to theater. I'm just ready for more.

Lauren Velez

#40. Everybody has their opinion on what's 'real,' and what's they choose to listen to and their personal preference. Whether they're 2 years old or 200 years old. And people can listen to whatever they want.

Lupe Fiasco

#41. When you start creating opinion, and you start creating difference of opinion, you're doing something. People are actually sitting down and critiquing. A lot of the stuff people hate, they really don't. They only look at the outer shell. They don't really get into it.

Lupe Fiasco

#42. Vargas isn't supposed to be faithful to a woman he hasn't slept with! Vargas only wants to sleep with Dr. Gomez, Lupe.

John Irving

#43. Why kill you when I can just not teach you and get the same results?

Lupe Fiasco

#44. Once you've been on tour six, seven years, you get an idea of what works and what doesn't work universally. There will be some crowds that we just can't play a song, but we've got 90% of a show that we know is going to be a hit with the Lupe Fiasco fan. I think the catering has already been done.

Lupe Fiasco

#45. Just be yourself and one day you will find someone who loves you for everything you are, flaws or no flaws.

Lupe Fiasco

#46. Flor and Juan Diego and Lupe were the Iowan's projects; Edward Bonshaw saw them through the eyes of a born reformer, but he did not love them less for looking upon them in this fashion.

John Irving

#47. You would never know if you could ever be, If you never try, you would never see.

Lupe Fiasco

#48. I think Romney's talking himself out of the election, to be honest. I was wondering what was gonna happen when the Republican power structure turned the money on, and then they turned on the money and nothing happened.

Lupe Fiasco

#49. I always saw two sides of life. I saw the dudes who would be the gangsta, big-time guys on the block, but would also be dedicated fathers. It was kind of weird to see that dual story that everybody has.

Lupe Fiasco

#50. Success is a very dangerous thing and I think we have to be very careful about when we dictate what success is for somebody else. Because you don't know what it's like.

Lupe Fiasco

#51. It was, 'If you don't do 'The Show Goes On,' your album's not coming out.' I had nothing to do with that record - nothing. I was literally told how I should rap on it. But I'm a bastard, 'cos I'll turn around and put it back in your face.

Lupe Fiasco

#52. You expect certain things. You build up in your mind how it's supposed to go down. When you get a record deal, you think you're supposed to get X, Y, and Z. It doesn't happen like that. You're like 'Oh, this isn't as exciting as I thought it was going to be.'

Lupe Fiasco

#53. I don't really get the same kinda romance that I would get from, like, jazz. And even to a lesser extent to rock 'n roll. Rock 'n roll has a romance to it - how can I put it? A very vulgar romance, but still a romance; whereas hip hop has more facade.

Lupe Fiasco

#54. I hope that God forgive us, all of us sinners turn us back into beginners, put us up where the winners go, Holy apartments in the gardens in which the rivers flow, thank you for all your blessings and all of your miracles.

Lupe Fiasco

#55. I long to play a judge. I long to play a lesbian woman. I long to play a councilman, someone with some chutzpah.

Lupe Ontiveros

#56. I got into skateboarding when I was like a shorty. It was a toy thing.

Lupe Fiasco

#57. I find it somewhat liberating to jump, to dive into things that are the opposite of me.

Lupe Fiasco

#58. I don't really care about the GOPs or the Democratic Party. My point is the people, giving the people truth.

Lupe Fiasco

#59. To Harald, may God forgive you and forgive me, too, but I prefer to take my life away and our baby's before I bring him with shame or killing him, Lupe. [Suicide note.]

Lupe Velez

#60. What's the biggest commercial for aggression, sexuality and materialism? What gets pumped into these kids' heads? Taking someone else's girl, which is so laissez-faire in hip-hop, will get you killed in the streets, but it doesn't seem to be an issue when you hear it on the radio.

Lupe Fiasco

#61. If you're informed, you make an informed choice. You understand the quality of certain things and you understand the history of certain things.

Lupe Fiasco

#62. We weren't raised Muslim - we were born Muslim. I didn't go to a Muslim school, but it was just the theme song. It was ambient.

Lupe Fiasco

#63. I think you have to ask yourself does voting work on the level that you are trying to effectuate change; that is the conversation you must have.

Lupe Fiasco

#64. I want to make music as good as Radiohead, as good as Coldplay. I can make hip-hop as good as anybody.

Lupe Fiasco

#65. It definitely wasn't like, 'Hey, I'm going to steal that, and nobody's going to know.' The original 'T.R.O.Y.' came out in 1992, and it was like a 20th anniversary kind of thing. All of those intentions were there for it to be resurrecting a classic for a new generation. I tried to honor it.

Lupe Fiasco

#66. Fear is such a weak emotion that's why I despise it

Lupe Fiasco

#67. The men can have a moral compass that is just unshakeable, they can have ethics that run to the core.

Lupe Fiasco

#68. In my fight against terrorism, to me, the biggest terrorist is Obama, and the United States of America.

Lupe Fiasco

#69. Chief Keef scares me. Not him specifically, but just the culture that he represents.

Lupe Fiasco

#70. When I started making my own music, I was more about recreating what I was hearing. I noticed that I had some control over what I was saying, and the effects that it's going to have on people. I wanted to focus more on the positive side of things, which are more in tune with my morals and ethics.

Lupe Fiasco

#71. True terrorism, you know, weaponized fear. In defense of ourselves, we're fighting - actively fighting something else. But if you're going to fight terrorism, to me, you fight the root causes of terrorism.

Lupe Fiasco

#72. My approach is I put God first; I say "God willing" all the time. The only way things will change is with God. So knowing that I can't really change anything, I'm just going to satire it.

Lupe Fiasco

#73. You can't control it once you turn it into the label, so there's the expectation that it'll leak a week before the album comes out. That's the world we live in.

Lupe Fiasco

#74. 360 deals are the new things of the industry. It's not about selling records; it's about selling T-shirts, getting a piece of your publishing, getting a piece of your touring, and all these other kind of properties.

Lupe Fiasco

#75. How can land be owned by another man. Warns one can not steal what was given as a gift. Is the sky owned by birds and the rivers owned by fish.

Lupe Fiasco

#76. When I retire, I want to step away on a positive note. What you put out into the world comes back to you. You actually change the world with what you do. I want to put some good in the world.

Lupe Fiasco

#77. You know what I had a problem with? The war - the war in Afghanistan.

Lupe Fiasco

#78. You ain't got to change the whole world. You just alter it a little bit and you redefine it into something beautiful.

Lupe Fiasco

#79. In a church, I am a saint. In a public place, I am a lady. In my own home, I am a devil ... My house is where I can do as I please, scream and yell and dance and fall on the floor if I like. I am myself when I am in my home.

Lupe Velez

#80. It's a massive undertaking putting an album together ... It's not light weight at all.

Lupe Fiasco

#81. Making your moves, paying your dues, chasing the cool.

Lupe Fiasco

#82. When you look out into the world and you turn on the news and it's just so dark, it's still there. But it's the battle, it's the struggle with that, and at the same time to recognize that happiness and love and all those things exist as well.

Lupe Fiasco

#83. Joe Louis was one of my closest friends ... I'm a great boxing fan. I used to go to the American Legion Stadium in Hollywood, every Friday night for 15 years. Down the aisle would come Lupe Velez, Johnny Weismuller, Mae West. All at ringside.

Mickey Rooney

#84. The biggest budget is the military budget. For what? We're fighting two wars in very small countries that have no nuclear weapons, that have no capabilities to destroy anything. They probably couldn't even get to America.

Lupe Fiasco

#85. I pay my taxes, but I've never voted and I never will vote as long as the system works the way it does. Even when Obama was running, I wanted to see a woman run! I'd rather see a woman in the White House as opposed to Obama.

Lupe Fiasco

#86. 'La Lupe' is my passion project. I've done it as a one-woman show, but I'm raising money to turn it into a film. It's a story of a Cuban singer who became the Queen of Latin Soul, the first woman on the N.Y. salsa scene.

Lauren Velez

#87. If you are what you say you are
A superstar
Then have no fear
The camera's is here
and the microphones and they wanna know
Oh oh oh oh yeah
If you are what you say you are
Then have no fear

Lupe Fiasco

#88. I always say that you define what success is to yourself.

Lupe Fiasco

#89. I can't play any instrument for the life of me, but I know what I want to hear.

Lupe Fiasco

#90. I was once that little boy
Terrified of the world, now I'm on a world tour

Lupe Fiasco

#91. I'm not in competition with nobody. I want to make good music for my fans who want it, who enjoy it, who learn something from it. And that's what it is.

Lupe Fiasco

#92. At the ballet classes I took when I first came to New York, I would see great dancers like Cynthia Gregory and Lupe Serrano. I would look at them and study what they could do, and what I couldn't do. And then I'd think maybe they should try what I could do.

Twyla Tharp

#93. I went from MC to being MS, this microphone controller is the motivational speaker.

Lupe Fiasco

#94. I think it is important that you have people from all different vanguards, from all different walks of society and different viewpoints to be focused on the struggle for equality and democracy. We need as many champions for the cause and as many events as possible to help keep this in focus.

Lupe Fiasco

#95. I don't like to degrade women, but I like pornography.

Lupe Fiasco

#96. The rewards we get by being those weird guys going against the grain to me are way more massive than selling a million billion records. I like climbing mountains or going on undersea dives for whales and stuff like that.

Lupe Fiasco

#97. Faced with the way the system does you in the 'hood sometimes, if you don't literally get out, your chances are slim. You'll definitely die mentally. You'll pretty much die physically.

Lupe Fiasco

#98. As a self-described Guadalupe girl, Lupe was sensitive to Guadalupe being overshadowed by the "Mary Monster." Lupe not only meant that Mary was the most dominant of the Catholic Church's "stable" of virgins; Lupe believed that the Virgin Mary was also "a domineering virgin.

John Irving

#99. I know how Lupe Velez felt. You fight just so long and then you begin to worry about being washed up. You fear there's one way to go and that's down.

Carole Landis

#100. What I've learned is not to take anybody's advice. If you rely solely on your fans, it sets you up for the downfall
on the industry side and if you rely on what your label is saying, it will disconnect you from your fans.

Lupe Fiasco