As a kid from Compton, you can get all the success in the world and still question your worth.

My passion is bringing storylines around and constructing a full body of work rather than just a 16-bar verse.

I think that's why I put my energy into making music. That's how I get my thoughts out, instead of being crazy all the time.

Eventually you get to this point where you understand what you want to do and get across and sound like.

I always was that person who was hard on myself and challenged myself no matter what I was doing, whether it was passing third grade or playing basketball.

Whenever I make music, it reflects where I'm at mentally.

I got a greater purpose. God put something in my heart to get across, and that's what I'm going to focus on, using my voice as an instrument and doing what needs to be done.

When I talk to kids, I'm really listening. When I do that, we have a little bit of a bigger connection than me being Kendrick Lamar and you being a student. It's almost like we're friends. Because a friend listens.

Groups break up because they never got across what they wanted to do personally, and they have creative differences, and egos start to clash.

We're all put on this earth to walk in His image, the Master.

As long as my music is real, it's no limit to how many ears I can grab.

You don't hear no artists from Compton showing vulnerability.

People gonna be they own individuals and have they own worlds and I can't knock it.

You can have the platinum album. But, you know, when you still feel like you haven't quite found your place in the world, it kind of gives a crazy offset.

The way people look at me these days - that's the same way I looked at President Obama before I met him. We tend to forget that people who've attained a certain position are human.

I get very, very, very irritable with people who complain about getting old, because I know a lot of people who would gladly trade places with us. I'm not saying it's easy, I'm not saying it doesn't hurt your feelings, I'm not saying it's not painful - and physically as well as mentally and spiritually - and it's frightening at times. However, people have really lost perspective, and it's a really bizarre topic of conversation that it's become a cultural peg in our world that aging is a bad thing. It's not logical to me.

I know that actors and actresses have a great reputation for being very, very selfish, and in some cases, that's very true. But in the theater I find it doesn't help you to be selfish. You sort of have to be selfless in the theater, and the more selfless you are - that doesn't mean don't take care of yourself - but the more you sort of surrender to the work, I find, the better the work is. That's just my experience.

Where I did feel a difference is learning to just work in a different way so that your resources are not completely depleted so that you don't have anything to give to your child when you go home, and fortunately I've been working long enough that I know how to make that shift so that I don't compromise my work or compromise my relationships; not compromising parenting is really the biggest difference.

Theater is the foundation of how I live my life, actually. My father was a playwright, so I was around it all the time and loved to talk shop with him, just loved it. And basically everything that I hold to be good and true and worthy, I learned in the theater. So not even just about the work, but just about life. Discipline, problem solving, creativity, how to get along with people.

I find that things don't bother me as much. If I had a bad day on set, it sort of just rolls of my back in a way that it didn't before. So that's where the biggest difference is, stuff that used to get under my skin or that I would worry about or be anxious about just isn't a problem. So in some ways, having a child has been very liberating. I found it very liberating.

There's something grueling but very appealing about rough, to-the-bone material in a low budget context. There's less between you and the material. There are less people. There is less time. There's often less technology. You have to concentrate very intensely, and you jump in a little deeper because there's nothing in your way... but there are challenges.

I never felt like a happy-go-lucky ingenue to begin with. And parts are written better when you're older. When you're young, you're written to be an ingenue, and you're written to be a quality. You're actually not written to be a person, you're written for your youth to inspire someone else, usually a man. So I find it just much more liberating.

The (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle) stories were great, for one. The thing that makes him a remarkable character is how he can withstand all of these different interpretations and different styles and, that's what makes a classic character a classic character; they keep coming back and you see them in a new way every time.

There's a real passing down in the theater, almost ad nauseam. You have to listen to older people talk about their experience, but it makes you very aware of what has come before you or what is coming after you - that you're a part of a link in a chain. It's not all about you.