“There's not one artist in the world that has as much responsibility as me. When I deliver a piece of music, it has to connect with the most genres of music … If you name rap artists, their only responsibility is to rap crowds. If you name a pop artist, their only responsibility is to a pop crowd. If you name some French dance music, their responsibility is to the cool crowd … All these people are looking at me from super-middle America to the hipsters like, ‘What's he gonna do next?’” —Kanye West on his upcoming album [MTV]

“I got the idea to sing shirtless from a book that I read on Egyptology. I kept looking at the pharaohs and thought, these guys look bitchin', they never wear shirts.” —Iggy Pop [NYP]

“[U]se the next couple of weeks preparing not only by publicly learning to fight (not a good message to fellow inmates), but by looking around, realizing that you are not as truly entitled as your money implies.” —Candy Spelling, in an open letter to Paris Hilton, responding to reports that the heiress has been taking self-defense classes [TMZ]

“Why is [Gore] actually organizing them? To make us aware of the greenhouse effect? Everybody's known about that problem for years. We are all [expletive] conscious of global warming.” —Bob Geldof, on Al Gore’s recently announced Live Earth concerts. In 2005, Geldof organized Live 8 to raise awareness of Africa’s little-known poverty problem. [Yahoo]

“There was not a woman involved.” —Charles Grodin, on being impeached as president of his fifth-grade class [LA Weekly]
—Lindsey Thomas