Quotes from Cedric Bixler-Zavala

Rock 'n' roll says, 'Hey, man, this is where you can be normal,' and then after a while you grow up and you go, 'Wait a minute. Oh, by the way, I learned how to do these cool things, but I never learned how to speak my mind. I never learned how to express myself emotionally. I should have been paying attention more.'

I'm a video store guy. I like thumbing through things and holding them.

You come to a point in your life where you don't want to just keep repeating yourself.

Who is anyone to say who doesn't deserve to come to this country? I'm a mutt, we're all mutts. Immigrants from whatever country are humans, we have to help each other.

I have cancelled shows before for knowing full well that my heart was not in it at that moment. Why? Because its an insult to the audience.

It's hard to turn my internal dialogue off from that character I become.

I think other people's interpretations of what I've written are a lot better than what I have, because I don't understand a lot of what I write.

You know Bad News, 'The Young Ones?' I learned not to spend a buttload of money on a sixth member.

You don't understand what you're angry about as a young man. You have those young man blues.

It's great to just keep going and throw new stuff out there.

I had 8-tracks when I was a kid.

But if you work in the rock industry, you should realize that the most important bands are the troublemakers.

I personally never trusted the audience.

I have definitely had a big impactful change since 2010, and it's rough to look in the mirror, but it's such an important thing to do that.

I do have a sense of spirituality.

All I can do is move forward with my music and just be happy that Mars Volta ever happened at all.

We have the ability to attract and repel at the same time, which I think you should embrace. Otherwise, you're just going to be, like, this Neil Diamond act.

Most people like to backpack through Europe; I think the States is big enough for you to have an adventure in.

You want to embrace what the idea of pop music is. Not necessarily the stereotype of pop music; there was a time when you'd say 'pop music' and conjure up images of the Sweet, or Marc Bolan. That, to me, can be avant-garde still.

When you're just a breath away from North Korea, it boggles your mind that that exists, or that something like the Khmer Rouge ever existed. You wonder how we allow that to happen as human beings; how we allow the human condition to get so depraved and desperate.

That romantic notion of a band being a total democracy is just like lying to yourself in the mirror.

The 20-year-old version of me had all this energy, and wanted to be obnoxious with his art and wanted to communicate even though he didn't know what he wanted to communicate.

To me, religion is the reason there is so much conflict in this world, and I think it's just so unnecessary to believe in this blue-eyed, white-bearded, white-haired God.

I'd hate to think that the stereotypical American is someone who just says 'Hi - bye' in conversation. That's how Europeans see us. And I'd like to think that not all of us are like that.