Quotes from John Rzeznik

Don't be afraid to play what you feel and what you think no matter what it is. If you play long enough, you start to move past your influences and find your own music.

There was always a guitar hanging around the house when I was a kid. It was a much lower impact instrument than me playing the drums, which is what I really wanted to do. My mother put a stop to the drumming.

For me, social media is a one-way deal. It's like all the traffic goes one direction and I don't care how many people follow me, I don't care how many people like what I do, give me a thumbs up or whatever it is. I am here to share a piece of information that I've decided is relevant to our relationship as musician and audience member.

Usually albums are frontloaded with singles.

I was brought up by four older sisters, so there's trouble right there. We are Catholic, very religious, and that sort of colors my world and my music.

There's always those few people that are like, 'Why don't you play any of the material off your first two records?' And I'm like, 'For the same reason that I don't play with G.I. Joe dolls anymore.' It's like, 'I'm a grown-up.' I wrote that music when I was a kid.

As soon as we finish a tour, I think, 'Oh my god, I'm unemployed.' I swear to God, every time I'm not touring, I hear my father yelling, 'You're unemployed if you're not working every day.'

We're living pretty interesting lives, we are traveling the world, we are going everywhere... it has been pretty cool! I'm so lucky to have been able to do all of that.

As a society, when you have your mortality slapped in your face, it changes you.

I like George Will, I don't agree with him particularly, but he's probably the smartest conservative out there.

I love the Smithsonian. I'm a real dork for that kind of stuff.

I think we'd sold a couple hundred records with our first album, maybe 1,000 at the most.

I was a bartender, a hot-dog vendor, a cook, sold magazine subscriptions.

I got really sick of playing just, like, 'Bop-bop-bop-bada-bop-bop-bada-rapa-pah.' Just playing that 190-beats-per-minute punk-rock songs, I didn't feel it anymore. And I always loved melody - when you looked back on those early records, there's always a hook buried in there somewhere.

I don't want people messing with my sound, my stuff.

Our society's sort of turning into a two-class system, where... most of the wealth and privileges are being concentrated into the hands of fewer and fewer people. And there's the rest of us... that have to go out and work and struggle and live and die and try to find some happiness and contentment and security.

When KROQ played 'Name,' that was the turning point for us.

At its best, MTV puts a face to the names, if you know what I mean. I think if you can take the expression of a song much farther, that's great. And it's one of the only outlets there is for artistic filmmaking. But it's a double-edged sword. At it's worst, MTV is just a lot of TV commercials for songs.

The good part about being a pessimist is, when something bad happens, you're never really devastated by it. And when something good happens, it's such a bonus.

Every day somebody comes up to me and says, 'That song really helped me through a difficult time,' or 'That's me and my wife's song' or 'This song means something to me because of... ' It's humbling to hear that. You're something special in someone's life, even if it is for three minutes.

I'm a songwriter.

Whether you are happy or miserable is completely a choice.

I have this morbid fascination with being completely alienated from everybody, and a lot of the time I really do feel that way.

You know what the most amazing luxury problem in the world is? When you've got a bunch of hits you have to play. That means the show's going to have to be a little longer.