Beastie Boys Book Quotes

“Kids … when someone’s making decisions for you, you can bet that they’ve also decided to take what’s yours.”
― Michael Diamond, Beastie Boys Book

“Things in life never come full circle. Maybe once or twice they’re hexagonal, but to me they’re almost always misshapen, as if drawn by a toddler in crayon.”
― Michael Diamond, Beastie Boys Book

“Oh, the boom box, oh God. Oh! This is an appropriation of the hood and the street — you’re giving us like baaad hip hop, thuggerish, but it’s not thuggish enough.”
― André Leon Talley, Beastie Boys Book

“What do you do when you get out-weirded by Bob Dylan? Walk away, I guess.”
― Adam Horovitz, Beastie Boys Book

“A good path to creating something mediocre is having rigid rules for what you're making and how you're making it.”
― Adam Horovitz, Beastie Boys Book

“Rap, in all its far-reaching ambition, was now It. Our hardcore punk world simply couldn’t compete anymore. How much louder and faster and rulier could bands get? So much of hardcore is about limits—shorter, simpler, more speed, more volume—whereas breakbeats and hip hop are all about the limitless—limitless possibilities, limitless imagination. Punk rock had changed our lives, but hardcore had served its purpose. Now all we wanted was to be our own version of the Treacherous Three.

No turning back.”
― Michael Diamond, Beastie Boys Book

“For certain people, you gotta remind them that you have a way better record collection than they do. And this tape I’m giving you now will show and prove it. (Not that it’s a competition…but it always is.)”
― Michael Diamond, Beastie Boys Book

“We were also alternately inspired by and jealous of P.E.’s “It Takes a Nation of Millions,” which Yauch played on the boomin’ system in his Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham D’elegance, because it made us question whether what we were making was even worthwhile. “Damn, they did it! We will never make anything this good.”
― Michael Diamond, Beastie Boys Book

“We spent a lot of time making this gift and I hope you enjoy it. But please don’t bring up the fake sample credits in the liner notes the next time we see each other, because I’ll know that you read this, and that you’re just trying to be nice by mentioning it, and let’s just not do that, okay? Thanks.”
― Adam Horovitz, Beastie Boys Book

“Getting into the details of what was going on personally with us after the record came out is a heavy thing to write about. It was unintentionally our last record. The band didn’t break up. We didn’t go our own creative ways. No solo project fucked things up to cause animosity. This was our last record because Adam got cancer and died. If that hadn’t happened, we would probably be making a new record as you read this. Sadly, it didn’t turn out that way. Sadly. Sadly. Too fucking sad to write about.”
― Adam Horovitz, Beastie Boys Book

“That's the thing with dealing with tragedy when you're young and/or a drunk and/or stoned: you can't really comprehend the severity of what's actually happening. It's easier to go into denial mode and shut off what's real. But that's a story for my personal memoirs. Which I just set on fire in my bathtub.”
― Adam Horovitz, Beastie Boys Book

“I first met Serch at Payday, a really good once-a-week night club started by these guys Patrick Moxey and Beaver, the latter of whom I know now from the rare-wine world. (Did I just write that sentence? You're goddamn right I did.)”
― Michael Diamond, Beastie Boys Book

“I like to think that while ADROCK was shouting about gratitude in the desert, his future wife, Kathleen Hanna, was singing "Suck My Left One" in a small club many miles away. And then their vocal particles travelled across land and sea until it became a giant love cloud ready to rain awesomeness on them for years to come." - Amy Poehler”
― Michael Diamond, Beastie Boys Buch