Quotes from Shavo Odadjian

When I moved from Armenia to L.A., I moved to North Kingsley Drive. That was my street, that's where I grew up and I saw everything there. I started skateboarding there. I witnessed homelessness, the poor, you know, I noticed gangs. I learned about friendship.

The industry is so oversaturated with these fly-by-night rappers who come in and come out. People who say 'rock is dead,' it's because of that. It's because of what's out there saturating the industry.

I don't like record company people very much, so I don't want to be one of them.

We're a band that keeps writing and recording - we don't know when it's over.

Man, George Clinton taught me some serious lessons! For a couple of years we were hanging out almost every other day. He'd stay at my house sometimes because we were working so much.

I would never want to put my name on a crappy thing. So, everything that has my name on it is pretty high quality: I put my heart and soul into it.

We don't want to name our songs after the choruses, so we sometimes come up with random titles. We don't care if people don't know the names of the songs, we want them to play it and never get sick of it. We want it to be exciting, melodic, heavy and emotional. It can make you cry and laugh and be angry.

There's a lot of bands that don't release an album every year. There's a lot of bands that take three, four or five years off here and there, but they don't say 'hiatus,' so no one really notices it.

Glendale is such a mecca of our fans. They are the most important things. It's the fans and then music, then we come third or fourth.

System is always System for me. If System's touring or making a record, I'm there.

I have a pretty good track record of what I put my name on, so I don't want to ruin that.

RZA helped me make my first beat, and he rhymed over it, and that made the 'Babylon A.D.' soundtrack. That first track was very raw and unmixable, but it's so anthemic. After that, I started learning how to make tracks. It was a process, but once you stop learning you're dead.

I was a Puma guy for a while. When System got signed, we got a deal with Puma, and they would just give me carte blanche, bro. I would walk into the Puma office and they would just give me whatever I wanted. I would just take it. I'd walk out with boxes and boxes, so I had every color, every style that I wore.

I always thought when I was 22 something bomb was gonna happen, then when I was 22, System started blowing up in like '96. Not blowing up really, but I started putting it into fruition. '96 is when people started noticing us, then '97 was when we got signed.

So the universe is the sacred silence and sleep, and the kids are the disorder. So how do you control the disorder in that universe? You can't. To me, that's 'Toxicity.'

Every human being sees something different in a painting, so I want every single person to have their own thoughts about our songs.

I would skate in the '80s. I started skating with Jordan 1s, and that was a big deal. I looked different, because no one was getting with Jordan 1s. That became my little thing. I grew up in Hollywood.

I can't try to write a song - songs come out of me. I have to play the guitar and if I jam a song, boom! That's a song.

If I plan to write, I won't be able to write anything good. I just need to kind of jam and let things come.

I didn't join a band and didn't get famous to stop playing music.

I didn't know you had to do so much to be a director. I thought, 'I can do it. I can write a treatment.' I didn't know about shot lists.

I like to think we're like a cross between Pink Floyd and Slayer.

I used to be very good friends with Kanye.

I haven't sold one painting. I have either given them as gifts or just kept them. It's like babies you know. It's, like, hard to sell a baby.