Quotes from Benji Madden

I think we live in a time where we can all distract ourselves from facing the pain or the reality of all of our lives - tons of ways to hide, to kill pain, to deal with pain.

There's definitely a lot of moments in my life now where I go, 'Wow, I get paid for this.' I've had worse jobs.

You're just these kids from a small town. You get a record deal, and everything just goes so fast. In the span of five albums... in a way, the band that you started in your bedroom, or your basement or your garage, kind of becomes not your band anymore. It becomes something bigger than you could have known. No one really prepares you.

Hard to find a better drug than a song you love.

There's an interesting thing I've seen with Australian bands: when you put them side-by-side with bands from other parts of the world, they're just more musical. They're just better.

The songwriting process is different on every record because you're never coming from the same place when you're writing.

Straight up, I'm from Waldorf, Maryland, you guys. Let's not forget that.

As young kids, we had a lot of tenacity. Life was tough at home, so it was easy to go out in the world and try.

It's hard to talk about childhood trauma. It's hard to talk about depression. It's hard to talk about anxiety. And we thought - I wonder if we just open up our subconscious and the things that we think about and hide from people every day and just let them come out in some of these lyrics.

I have a great family, so I'm lucky I've gotten to experience all the joys of having a family.

I think what defines our band is really that, you know, we're just living our dream and making records that we love and having a good time.

Coffee in Italy and some places in Europe is great, but there's just something about Australian coffee.

The guy who runs Big Day Out doesn't like us for some reason; I don't even know why. We do all the other festivals, and we enquired about it. Who knows, maybe he'll eventually crack, but maybe not. We're just going to keep knocking on his door late at night saying, 'Come on, dude!'

A lot of time, I have to be the person who just goes, 'Hey dude, don't even trip. Don't worry about it.'

It's important for artists to value themselves - whatever that means. Everyone's going to take that in a different way. If you don't value yourself, you will be bought and sold.

I always jump at the chance to mentor kids when it comes to music.

Every time we go to New Zealand, it gets harder to leave. Everyone's always treated us like we're at home.

It does feel really good when you play a new song, and it's the loudest singalong of the night. It means just as much when we're playing the old songs, and people are singing along to those, too.

Novelty always sparks ideas.

That's just the music industry. They always want you to write something like the one that was popular.

One of the most harmful things in the music industry is 'record-by-committee,' where 10 people from the label gather around, and they make you write a 100 songs and decide which one's a hit. That takes the inspiration out of it.

I think Good Charlotte has definitely always been for the underdogs and the misfits. We haven't ever really been the critics' darlings.

We were kids that didn't have any education. None of our parents were in the music business or even college graduates. We didn't have someone guiding us. We were just uneducated kids from the middle of nowhere that suddenly had a band going around the world.

I've started to see records as just a snapshot, a portrait of where you were at at that time. And if you're comfortable with that, sometimes it's like an old high school year book picture - it makes you blush a little bit, but you gotta learn to really appreciate each stage of your life and where you're at.