Missy Elliot quotes:

My Struggles is a record close to me. It's about what I went through at home living with an abusive father.

Everybody is doing the same old thing.

I'm close to my mother, and I could sit talking on the phone with her all day.

I don't have time for lie-on-the-beach vacations. I'm a zoo person. There's one in New Jersey where animals actually come up to your car. I love the monkeys - I used to give them bubblegum to chew.

The rapping is cool, but my lines aren't all that fly. People like Biggie Smalls or Jay-Z who say stuff that you have to rewind and listen to twice and be like, "Wow, what made them say that?" or "I would have never thought about saying that" - those are rappers I really look up to. As far as flows, I can give you flows all day.

I love my mother. She's my first love. She has been through a lot and is a sole survivor.

MC is a funny girl and always makes me laugh no matter what. I love her!

Hip-hop is definitely not what it used to be, which was creative, original music.

I'm going to have to take one of my bedrooms and gut it out and make it into a big closet, because now I'm starting to put sneakers in the pantry. Even my maids are like, "No more, please! It's too much!"

I want to be cutting-edge.

Every day is not a beautiful day for anybody, but I try to treat all my fans nice and all the interviewers nice.

I gotta feel like what I'm giving the fans is 100 per cent and that it's game-changing. I don't just throw out microwave records.

Boy lift it up, lets make a toasta Lets get drunk, its gon bring us closa Don't I look like a HalleBerry posta?

I mean, when it's time to rhyme rhyme, I can get down for mine.

I always made people laugh, and everybody wanted me to sit at the table with them. I don't joke as much as I used to, but I can still be a little comedian every now and then.

I am very scared of wasps; my cousin was stung in the eye once.

I didn't want to be a genius! That ain't cool.

I got a mother who's very strong after taking the whippings that she took from my father.

I like collaborating, but I felt I should do my first single by myself so people don't think I'm leaning on other artists to be a success.

I like to go on YouTube to see the underground sounds, what the kids are listening to, and kind of gauge my music around that.

I love this city [Tel Aviv]!

I put my thing down, flip it, and reverse it

I really enjoy writing and producing for other artists. Some people save their best songs for their own albums. I'd rather give another artist one of my songs. At the end of the day, it still represents me.

I want kids of this generation to see that everything is cool, that there's some kind of unity in hip-hop. We all found something that's really important to us, and music is all we've really got.

I want to make something commercial that people can pick up on.

I wasn't born a superstar.

If I didn't have some kind of education, then I wouldn't be able to count my money.

I'm kind of speaking for the females, ... what's in our mind if we could get revenge, what it would be like. Not to say that we would do it because we would be locked up if you go by my video version of it but just in our minds, if we could have our way with a relationship gone bad. So it's crazy.

I'm not a person that's walkin' down the street looking mean all day.

I'm not a prostitute but I can give you what you want

I'm not tryin' to come off as the best lyricist.

I've always had a lot of creative impact on the music with Timbaland.

Lil Wayne is a person who I think is really deserving of the success he's had. I'm someone who can stay in the studio 24-7, and I've watched him stay in there just as long. He has a creativeness about him that I love.

Music is a male-dominated field. Women are not always taken as seriously as we should be, so sometimes we have to put our foot down.

My first love is writing and producing. So I sometimes put my own stuff off to work on other people's projects.

No, because I don't want to hear what's hot and feel I have to copy it. I'll just make up my own thing.

People ask, "What do you think about being called Puff Mommy?" Puff's a very successful young man, so I don't have a problem if that's what they wanna call me. If anybody calls me a female Quincy Jones, that's way, way complimentary. That's something I'll cherish for life.

The double chin's not good for the red carpet.

What my home life is like now is great.

When interviewers ask me who I'm sleeping with or if I don't like such-and-such or what is my sexuality, that's not beneficial to the world. They need to ask me about stuff that may help readers, like how my father abused my mother for many years. A lot of kids go through that and need to know what they should do.

When it comes to size, most people don't want to see themselves looking bigger than what they are.

When you turn on your radio, you don't always want to hear about someone shootin' some person. Even if that's the lifestyle they live, people don't always want to hear it.

You have to be ready to sing and perform at any time.

Music should be your escape.

When I first started out in the music industry and went to Elektra Records, I didn't go to be an artist, I went to get a record label started. And they said in order to have a label deal, I had to be an artist - so that's what I did.