Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
When I'm afraid of something, I'm going at it twice as hard. I don't believe any fear can be conquered by avoiding it.
I'm one of those guys who always has that kind of underlying anxiety kind of always creeping around in the background.
Too many rockers put on the leather pants and shirt first. But if you write good songs, the pants and shirt will follow.
I'm one of these guys who always feel like the outsider, you know? I'm always longing to be part of something, you know?
I enjoy watching Chris Matthews a lot. He reminds me of a throwback to the older school kind of pundits like Tim Russert.
When I write a song, I want to write something that is really catchy and says something that might actually touch somebody.
In my family, my earliest memory of you get out of line is - BAM! It was a lot of corporal punishment. But you can't do that.
I've taken a lot of crap. That's just the way life is. There are going to be writers who like you and writers who despise you.
I have this morbid fascination with being completely alienated from everybody, and a lot of the time I really do feel that way.
There are a lot of reasons to be hated in pop culture, and being a straight white male is one of them. In fact, I almost hate me
Sometimes it doesn't feel like I'm in control but that I'm going along for the ride. And I'm a lousy passenger; I love to drive.
I thought 'Gutterflower' was a really good record, but the album before that got so big that everyone expected us to go through that again.
It's liberating to live at home during the week, but on the weekend it's like, Jesus Christ, how much History Channel can one human being watch?
I think the work is always personal. This album differs. It seems to be a lot more positive. It seems to have a certain amount of optimism about it.
I was brought up by four older sisters, so there's trouble right there. We are Catholic, very religious, and that sort of colors my world and my music.
Punk was key to the early part of me playing guitar. I was really into melodic punk-rock. I related to punk more than Lynyrd Skynyrd or Yes or Van Halen.
I mean my mother always wanted us to be individuals. She always instilled that into our brains which was incredibly painful for an adolescent to deal with.
The good part about being a pessimist is, when something bad happens, you're never really devastated by it. And when something good happens, it's such a bonus.
Things just evolve. I sort of have no control over what happens with the songs. Sometimes I'm afraid I might wake up one morning with an entire record of polka songs.
Don't be afraid to play what you feel and what you think no matter what it is. If you play long enough, you start to move past your influences and find your own music.
You know what the most amazing luxury problem in the world is? When you've got a bunch of hits you have to play. That means the show's going to have to be a little longer.
There's a lot of shiny, pretty objects out there that when you actually touch them, they just fall apart. And it's like, you need to be authentic, you need to be yourself.
I have a very powerful form of alcoholism. I finally gave up and accepted the fact that if I even smell too much booze, I'm going to start drinking again. That's just how I am.
I wouldn't start writing songs like 'Name' all the time just because I thought that's what people wanted to hear. I'll write a song in the same vein because it's what I want to write.
We were so heavily influenced by The Replacements and by a lot of hard core bands like Bad Brains, not that we sounded like them but we were trying to play as hard and fast as we could.
If you find yourself perplexed, or perhaps in a quandary, remember that human growth is perpendicular. We grow up and we grow forward, we just have to keep on growing steadily in both ways.
As soon as we finish a tour, I think, 'Oh my god, I'm unemployed.' I swear to God, every time I'm not touring, I hear my father yelling, 'You're unemployed if you're not working every day.'
Scars are souvenirs you never lose, the past is never far, did you lose yourself somewhere out there, did you get to be a star, and don't it make you sad to know that life is more than who you are?
It's really weird how the rock world is quickly becoming like the jazz world. How if you do OK, or get a tiny bit of success, that's considered a sellout, whether you did anything different or not.
I work out. I try to work out every day. That keeps me in the moment, which is great. Keeps my head from thinking about the future and the past too much. I love working out. That really helps me a lot.
I just feel really lucky to have had some hits because we had a lot of time where we didn't have them. It's better to have a hit. You can ask anyone - U2, Green Day - and they'll tell you the same thing.
The business of making music is changing so radically because of the Internet. It's become a lot more democratic in one respect, but in another respect there's no one left to guide and mentor young bands.
I made a deadline for myself that if I wasn't earning a living being a musician by 'A Boy Named Goo,' I was going to get back to school, get a degree, and go on with my life - and enjoy the memories I had.
When I'm around people who are incredibly passionate about what they're doing, people who live their lives in a more selfless way than most people. That's when I'm inspired. That's what I aspire to do and be.
There was always a guitar hanging around the house when I was a kid. It was a much lower impact instrument than me playing the drums, which is what I really wanted to do. My mother put a stop to the drumming.
We were never hip, which is fine with me. We aren't that interested in that whole situation. But all the times how we tried and failed to get across in our music, we actually succeeded on 'Superstar Car Wash.'
I refuse to listen to Rush Limbaugh. I listen to a lot of conservative radio when I drive around in my car. I refuse to listen to him because he's just ridiculous, just a clown. I love Rachel Maddow obviously.
When I was 18, there were 50 people that I called my friends. Today, there are only three, but I'm glad to have those three. If you have three people that you can really call your friends, then you truly have it made.
I have to let myself be vulnerable in order to have a good marriage. That's something I'm really going to have to work on. A lot of times I'm really guarded because of what I do for a living, what I've done in my life.
Everybody was a democrat where we grew up. It was a blue-collar town and the democrats represented the working class and the unions. But very, very super-conservative Catholic, very proud immigrant community, very stoic.
With every decision you make in your life, you're going to have some regrets about the way it goes. You just have to chose which set of regrets you can live with the best, and try to minimize the amount of regrets you have.
One of the things about live music that's so incredibly important and can't be replaced and automated is the common focus of a room full of people having that human contact and being immersed in the sensory overload of a rock concert.
I think we got started like all bands. We wanted to make some noise, hang out, and have some fun. Remember, we're from Buffalo - there isn't really that much to do. When we started we were a cover band and slowly developed our own material.
I'm a guy so I equate vulnerability with fear. What makes me fearful. I feel vulnerable when I release material, my work, to the world, and I have no control over the outcome. Those are very vulnerable moments. I'm getting married on Friday.
The scary part of alcoholism and addiction and that is until a person is ready to stop, they're not gonna, and there's nothing anyone can do. There's nothing anyone can say or do. And the unfortunate part is sometimes people die because of that.
I went to a vocational high school, which is where they basically train you to go out and dig ditches. You gotta learn a trade. Well, why do you gotta learn a trade? Because you're not smart enough to go to college. That was the underlying gist of it.
There's always those few people that are like, 'Why don't you play any of the material off your first two records?' And I'm like, 'For the same reason that I don't play with G.I. Joe dolls anymore.' It's like, 'I'm a grown-up.' I wrote that music when I was a kid.
I got into alternative rock in the early 80s, bands like Husker Du and The Replacements. Bob Mould's playing was a huge influence. It was very heavy with a lot of open tunings, which was great because I played in trios, so I used open tunings to get a fuller sound.
We started the band when I was about 19 or 20. At that age, it would have been kind of hard to imagine a lot of the stuff that I've written. We were playing garage rock. I wanted to dash out three chords and scream. But if you do that for 20 years, what's the point?
The disparity between being a 10-year-old boy playing air guitar, wishing I was a rock star, and the reality of the whole thing is insane. A girl will throw her bra onstage, and I say to myself, if I was the guy that pumped your gas today, would you throw your bra at me?