Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I've met very lonely people who have 10,000 friends on Facebook. And it's just not real. We've set up this artificial society in cyberspace. And that's supposed to be a community, like a real community. It's supposed to be where people go to get solace or friendship or have fun.
The first record we made in three days. We literally stayed up for three days making the first album. It was crazy, crazy, crazy for us to do that. We couldn't believe anyone would give us a record deal. I look back on that record fondly but with just the slightest bit of a cringe.
The fear of rejection really kind of stunts your growth as a person. I mean, it's like a friend of mine says, who cares if you fail? Who cares if you fail? It's like babies try to get up and walk all the time and they keep falling down. If we just gave up, we'd all be crawling around.
I got really sick of playing just, like, 'Bop-bop-bop-bada-bop-bop-bada-rapa-pah.' Just playing that 190-beats-per-minute punk-rock songs, I didn't feel it anymore. And I always loved melody - when you looked back on those early records, there's always a hook buried in there somewhere.
Every day somebody comes up to me and says, 'That song really helped me through a difficult time,' or 'That's me and my wife's song' or 'This song means something to me because of... ' It's humbling to hear that. You're something special in someone's life, even if it is for three minutes.
At its best, MTV puts a face to the names, if you know what I mean. I think if you can take the expression of a song much farther, that's great. And it's one of the only outlets there is for artistic filmmaking. But it's a double-edged sword. At it's worst, MTV is just a lot of TV commercials for songs.
I really believe that women have much easier access to their souls than men do. Because as men we're taught to wear masks, to drown out our emotions in competition and making money. Now women are being forced to do that too. But I admire their capacity to bear their spirituality so much more deeply than men.
I have this dreadful image of me driving down Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, with the windows rolled down, and our song comes on... and I'm sitting there listening to it and some guy pulls up next to me and thinks, 'Hey, it's that guy from the Goo Goo Dolls... he's listening to his own music. What a jerk!'
Our society's sort of turning into a two-class system, where... most of the wealth and privileges are being concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer people. And there's the rest of us... that have to go out and work and struggle and live and die and try to find some happiness and contentment and security.
I have this rule: It's like, if you write an amazing, cool song that you mean and then you go put your leather pants on and sing it in front of people; that's OK. But if you put your leather pants on and stand in front of the mirror and go, "Ok, I've got to write a song to fit these pants," then you're in trouble.
I think people get a little resentful when they were there at the beginning, when they supported you when you played in front of nobody - which we still do. They get a little resentful when they have to share with new people. That's why I want to really look out for the people who've been with us from the beginning.
I wasn't present for my own life for a long time. I wasn't there; I wasn't in my relationships; I wasn't in my band; I wasn't in my soul - I was disconnected from all of it. I would let myself live in a miserable situation forever, mostly of my own making. I made my own misery and made the people around me miserable.
Performing with a hologram in a three-dimensional world feels somewhat strange. But you know, the experience of playing live in a room full of people is most exciting, it's something that the social media has not been able to recreate. There's some kind of intensity about it, something that the social media doesn't capture.
For me, social media is a one-way deal. It's like all the traffic goes one direction and I don't care how many people follow me, I don't care how many people like what I do, give me a thumbs up or whatever it is. I am here to share a piece of information that I've decided is relevant to our relationship as musician and audience member.
Marriage is a really scary thing. I'm excited about it. I know it's not a mistake, it's the absolute right thing to do. I'm really happy about it. I really, really love my fiancee. We're good friends and I think it's going to work. But that's just the point - it's going to take work. It does make me feel vulnerable to be like, wow, I'm committed to this person for the rest of my life.
I'm amazed that I can sit down, put a guitar in my hands and start playing kind of free style, and it will be four hours later and it will feel like it's been five minutes. I think that adds depth to your being, when something in your life can do that for you. Everybody should try to find something in their life that can do that for them. People find really elaborate self-destructive ways of killing time on this planet. That's why they take drugs or drink, trying to alter their state of being. If you can find something that doesn't destroy you, but deepens your character, you're really lucky.