ON GROWING UP POOR:
"No one has a choice where they grow up or what colour they are. If you`re a rich kid or a ghetto kid, you have no control over your circumstance. The only control you have is to get out of your situation or stay in it."
"Why is it so hard for people to believe that white people are poor?! I wouldn`t say I lived in a ghetto, I`d say I lived in the 'hood. The same friends I had back then are the same people on tour with me now."
"Life was sh!t and we were sitting ducks for getting our house robbed. I`d work so hard to get a TV or a VCR. Every fucking time we`d get robbed."
ON HIS RACE:
"It`s funny how all the magazines can dwell on my race, but they could NEVER say that my shit is whack because they know my sh!t is tight."
"Unless you want to fuck me, why do you care what I look like?"
"I`m white in a music started by black people. I`m not ignorant to the culture and I`m not trying to take anything away from the culture."
"When you`re a little kid, you don`t see colour, and the fact that my friends were black never crossed my mind. It never became an issue until I was a teenager and started trying to rap."
"Nobody asks to be born, nobody has a choice of what colour they`ll be, or whether they`ll be fat, skinny, anything. I had to work up to a certain level before people would even look past my colour."
"Nobody has the right to tell me what kind of music to listen to or how to dress or how to act or how to talk. I lived this, you what I'm sayin? And if you hear an Eminem record, you`re gonna know the minute that it comes on that this ain`t no fluke."
ON BEING FAMOUS:
"I couldn`t even get into a club just being Eminem, before the video. Last night, they had people clearing tables for me. It`s bananas."
"Sometimes I`m real cool, but sometimes I could be a real asshole. I think everyone is like that."
"You gotta be careful what you wish for. I always wished and hoped for this. But it`s almost turning into more of a nightmare than a dream."
"I can`t even go in public anymore. I`ve got the whole world looking at me. I can`t be treated like regular person anymore."
"You can't control who likes you. If I got Backstreet Boy fans what am I supposed to do? Turn them away? Whoever likes my stuff, likes my stuff but just know Slim Shady is hip hop, I grew up on hip hop, it's the music I love and it's the music I respect. I respect the culture...that's me"
ON HIS LYRICS:
"A lot of my rhymes are just to get chuckles out of people. Anybody with half a brain is going to be able to tell when I`m joking and when I`m serious."
"I do say things that I think will shock people. But I don`t do things to shock people. I`m not trying to be the next Tupac, but I don`t know how long I`m going to be on this planet. So while I`m here, I might as well make the most of it."
"All I`m doing is taking what`s wrong with the world and making it into music."
"People act like I invented certain words or ideas, and what`s with that? I write about what`s going on in the world, and my music ain`t going to change until the world changes."
"I do promote violence and I don`t give a fuck
"I`m not alone in feeling the way I feel. I believe that a lot of people can relate to my shit--whether white, black, it doesn`t matter. Everybody has been through some sh!t, whether it`sdrastic or not so drastic. Everybody gets to the point of I don`t give a fuck`"
"I`m not responsible for every kid out there. I`m not a role model, and I don`t claim to be."
ON HIS DAUGHTER:
"The more adult I`m becoming, the more I`m realizing that [my music] might have an affect on her, or it might scare her, or she might hear a word or a sentence that she doesn`t know how to take. I`d just rather not even play it around her."
"Being this little, the only thing I want her to worry about is playing What`s she going to play with today? Is she going to play with dolls, is she going to color today?"
"I thank her every day. Every day I wake up, I thank her."
"I`m not as religious as I should be, but we do try and instill it in our daughter. We try to teach her wrong from right, having been as wrong as we`ve been."
"My little girl is beautiful. My little girl is going to be a movie star. She`s only three, but she`s so smart! Three going on seven."
ON KIM:
"Kim used to get mad when I rapped about wanting to kill her. But I tell her, look if you piss me off when I`m writing a song, you might be in it."
"Just because I talk about my daughter and put her in my songs, or I say something about Kim in my songs, doesn`t give you the right or nobody else to talk about `em and feel free to do so."
"Not to defend Kim, but I realize what has happened to me has probably been a strain on her, too."
"When we were younger, she supported everything I did. The older we got, the more reality started to set in. She`s one of those people that`s real down to earth, like Hello! You`re living in fantasy. These things don`t happen to people like us.`"
"You never would`ve thought, but I played [the song Kim] to her once we started talking again. I asked her to tell me what she thought of it. I remember my dumb-*bleep* saying `I know this is a fucked-up song but it shows how much I care about you. To even think about you this much. TO even put you on a song like this.`"
"We were kinda like high school sweethearts. But we both dropped out. It wasn`t a fucking wise decision for both of us to quit school, have a child together."
ON HIS MOTHER:
"As soon as I turned fifteen my mother was like, `Get a fucking job and help me with these bills or your ass is out.` Then she would fucking kick me out anyway, half the time right after she took most of my paycheck."
"When I was growing up I hated my mother. Why? Lots of reasons. But mainly because we were constantly moving, so I was always the new kid at school. I never stopped to think about whether that was her fault or not or what the situation was, I just blamed her for everything."
"My mother did a lot of dope and *bleep* - a lot of pills - so she had mood swings. She`d go to bed cool, then wake up like, `Mother fuckers, get out!`"
"My mom is a lawsuit queen. All her life, she has sued people. That's how she makes money. When I was five, she had a job on the cash register at a store that sold chips and soda. Other than that, I don`t remember her working a day in her life."
"I want people to see what type of person she is and what my life has been like."
"I`m sure [my brother]`s afraid of my mother and I`m sure she`s doing the same things to him that she did to me."
WORDS OF WISDOM:
"If there`s something that you want to do and you work hard enough at it, you`ll do it. But you have to know that`s what you want to do, whatever it is. If it`s riding bikes, if it`s painting cars, whatever it is, if you want to do it bad enough and you have your heart set on it and that's your dream,don't give up your fucking dream."
"Don`t do drugs, don`t have unprotected sex, don`t be violent. Leave that to me."
