My goal in music is to create nostalgic moments.

If you hear a voice within you say ‚you cannot paint,‘ then by all means paint, and that voice will be silenced.

There’s nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child.

If you check your ego at the door when it comes to comedy, you’ve got a pretty good shot at making a great movie that you can commit yourself to, you can jump off the proverbial cliff with, and have a great time, and the audiences respond to that.

Of course it would be nice for everybody and myself if we could win but we can still have a personal or a team win if we achieve a target that is effectively a win for us.

Wrestling was like stand-up comedy for me. Every night I had a live audience of 25,000 people to win over. My goal was never to be the loudest or the craziest. It was to be the most entertaining.

As an artist your first loyalty is to your art. Unless this is the case, you’re going to be a second-rate artist.

I could sing you a thousand and one doo-wop songs. I love the simplicity in that music. It’s not super-poetic, it’s just from the heart.

I really, truly believe that writing comes out of the body; of course, the mind is working as well, but it’s a double thing and that doubleness is united. I mean, you can’t separate persona from psyche; you just can’t do it.

George Carlin’s album, ‚Class Clown,‘ came out when I was in high school. I memorized a lot of that album. I’d come home from school, put it on, and listen over and over. I started memorizing it. I don’t even know why. I loved it so much I memorized it.

When you revolutionize education, you’re taking the very mechanism of how people be smarter and do new things, and you’re priming the pump for so many incredible things.

Your personal history is a part of what happens with your hands and your head as you play music.

I think I can keep a rhythm to a beat, but there are quite a few people who would argue with me.

I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies.

We like to think about how smart we are. But I think talent as a writer is hard-wired in, it’s all there, at least the basic elements of it. You can’t change it any more than you can choose whether to be right handed or left handed.

I was adored once too.

Genius… means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

I’d like to think you don’t stop being creative once you get happy. My ultimate goal is to end up being happy. Most of the time.

If you want to achieve something, you build the basis for it.

Where the spirit does not work with the hand, there is no art.

One science only will one genius fit; so vast is art, so narrow human wit.

The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless.

When I was 10 years old, I loved – I loved books, and I used to haunt the secondhand bookshop. And I found a little book I could just afford, and I bought it, and I took it home. And I climbed up my favorite tree, and I read that book from cover to cover. And that was Tarzan of the Apes. I immediately fell in love with Tarzan.

Tones sound, and roar and storm about me until I have set them down in notes.

It’s good to wander into the studio and walk out with something that’s better than you’d imagined it to be. If everything was as you imagined it to be, it just wouldn’t be as much fun.

‚Recreative‘ is a word that I invented because in urban culture, with colloquialism, we invent so many slangs. I don’t like the way that ‚recreational‘ sounds – I don’t like to say I do a lot of ‚recreational‘ reading. I like to say that I read ‚recreatively.‘ I do a lot of ‚recreative‘ reading.

In writing, I apply my feminine side and respect the mystery involved in creation.

Music is the melody whose text is the world.

In fact, you couldn’t give me anything to make me go back to being a teenager. Never. No, I hated it.

In my work, as a writer, I only photograph, in words, what I see.

Pound’s crazy. All poets are. They have to be. You don’t put a poet like Pound in the loony bin.

It’s still scary every time I go back to the past. Each morning, my heart catches. When I get there, I remember how the light was, where the draft was coming from, what odors were in the air. When I write, I get all the weeping out.

Begin with the end in mind.

The Beatles created something that never trailed off. What a gift that was to their fans. If you’re into the Beatles, you loved them from beginning to end.

Five or six songs leaked from the original version of ‚Encore.‘ So I had to go in and make new songs to replace them.

To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.

The fame isn’t important to me. It’s a blessing to have. Having so many people that support me, that love me and listen to my music, is beautiful.

It usually helps me write by reading – somehow the reading gear in your head turns the writing gear.

When I was performing the songs on ‚Kiss Land,‘ it was a great singalong. But there were moments where I realized some parts were catchier than the others. There’s maybe two choruses on all of ‚Kiss Land.‘

I taught myself how to play the guitar, I taught myself how to play the drums, and I kind of fake doing both of them. But drumming comes more natural to me, and it just feels better.

My future is righteousness.

Write injuries in dust, benefits in marble.

I didn’t want to play it boring and safe. I also didn’t want to innovate too much. Second albums, man, they’re even scarier than first ones.

You create a community with music, not just at concerts but by talking about it with your friends.

Eating words has never given me indigestion.

Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another.

I get a more passionate delivery when I just go in the booth and let the music talk.

When I am writing, I do not distinguish between the natural and supernatural. Everything seems real. That is my world, you could say.

Before I do anything, I think, well what hasn’t been seen. Sometimes, that turns out to be something ghastly and not fit for society. And sometimes that inspiration becomes something that’s really worthwhile.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

The problem with writing a book in verse is, to be successful, it has to sound like you knocked it off on a rainy Friday afternoon. It has to sound easy. When you can do it, it helps tremendously because it’s a thing that forces kids to read on. You have this unconsummated feeling if you stop.

Songs are my diaries; they always have been. You have to put your trust in everyone because putting down those real, personal details and thoughts that make a song authentic also opens you right up. I am constantly misunderstood; a lot of people just don’t get me.

An idea that is not dangerous is not worthy of being called an idea at all.

I can operate in half-a-song format.

I owe everything to Nirvana. But I can’t let that overshadow the future. For the first few years, I didn’t even want to talk about Nirvana. Partly because it was just painful to talk about losing Kurt but also because I wanted the Foo Fighters to mean something.

You know, Nirvana used to start rehearsals with the three of us just jamming. For, like, a half an hour, just noise and freeform crap – and usually it was crap. But sometimes things would come from it, and some songs on Nevermind came from that, and ‚Heart Shaped Box‘ and stuff on ‚In Utero‘ just happened that way.

Good ideas are free – or at least they should be.

Creative people don’t behave very well generally. If you’re looking for examples of good relationships in show business, you’re gonna be depressed real fast. I don’t have time for anything else right now but work and my daughter. She’s my first priority.

Yet, it is true, poetry is delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.

Well I think a lot of times we’re putting things off and I’m going to do it later. I’m going to break this bad habit or I’m going to pursue this dream or I’m going to treat my spouse better.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.