Quotes from Deadmau5

The label does what's good for the label. Always.

I like to think of 'the studio' as a laboratory where I can go in, learn tricks, apply, revise, and release. I'd figure I had about the same emotional attachment to my craft as a guy over at NASA does over... NASA stuff.

You have to have a certain amount of grit in your sound, and having real synths and talking certain elements outside your computer can help with this.

I get to listen and enjoy music that is partially mine. Maybe influenced and guided. I created some simple outlines, but ultimately, I'm hearing a derivative work.

There are some great songs - like, I really like 'Snowcone' and 'Whelk Then' and 'No Problem.' I think I'm dissatisfied that it's not written from start to finish; it's over a year's worth of work that doesn't correlate.

With my previous record deal, it'd be like, 'OK, so I have this track then, EMI - do you know any singers, maybe? Do you have any singers on your little label there?' And funnily enough, they didn't. But I prefer finding unknown singers myself anyway.

I get anxiety from a noise or some scuffling at the side of the stage. I hear stories all the time, from as minor as Dillon Francis getting smacked in the head with a flying beer can to Dimebag Darrell.

I didn't come up as a DJ, so I don't play by DJ rules.

Going out and being nice to the world at large doesn't make me feel good, so I replace that with things, with technology that does get me excited and does get my brain spinning, until one day it stops spinning, and then you can bury me.

I really like the grittiness of early Amon Tobin - I'm a huge fan of his old music, and I tried to borrow from it, not emulate it. I don't love my own original work.

I am very strict on what products I want to associate myself with, and I felt that some things were just to make a buck.

I have a very varied taste in music from Boards of Canada to Radiohead. So I just love making music and being in the studio.

I have back-and-forth feelings about everything a lot - it's not limited to my albums.

Everybody's all up on the EDM bandwagon now, because it's, like, another viable conduit for traditional pop music to ride for a bit so they can get out of their little stagnant pool and make a dance hit.

Music is 80 percent fun and 20 percent work. Video games, for me, is all fun.

When I'm working on something and need to take a little break, I'll go down and play some video games.

I'm a video game enthusiast. I love video games! They were a huge part of my upbringing in their early form, when I was all about 'Dig Dug' and 'River Raid.' As they evolved, so did my music-making, and we just kind of grew up together like cool friends.

Virtual reality, to me, seems to have a number of different tiers. Entry-level-tier VR is this experience: on a phone, some simple head-tracking, and some quick and dirty, game-engine-quality stuff.