Missy Elliott quotes:

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

Everybody is doing the same old thing.

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

Music should be your escape.

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

What my home life is like now is great.

I'm blessed to be living this dream of writing and singing, but that's not the real dream I had. The real dream was to make enough money to take care of all the pain and suffering that my mother has been through.

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

Now everybody's sampling.

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

I'd stand on the side of the road when I was just a little girl singing on trash cans.

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

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 used to put all my doll babies on my bed with their hands up and I would do full shows for them. I'd even do the screaming and clapping. I was bugging to be a singer.

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

I wasn't born a superstar.

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

I want to be cutting-edge.

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.

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

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

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