Quotes from Chris Cornell

There was a period in my life where most of my musical career was spent in a band that was very aggressive, and there was sort of a wall of volume all the time.

I can go from one extreme to another, from playing at the Sydney Opera House on the Songbook tour to shows with Soundgarden at Voodoo Fest, all in a week.

Definitely, when you get into something where bands are playing for 30,000 people, it's not like the post-punk, U.S. independent scene.

Obviously, I want my kids to be happy, and I believe that they can be super successful at whatever they want to do, but don't make the successful part more important than the process of doing it. Especially if it's an artistic endeavor.

'The Beatles' did whatever they wanted. They were a collection of influences adapted to songs they wanted to write. George Harrison was instrumental in bringing in Indian music. Paul McCartney was a huge Little Richard fan. John Lennon was into minimalist aggressive rock.

You can really walk around a song and completely, if it's a good song, look at it from a lot of different angles. Johnny Cash with Rick Rubin illustrated that perfectly.

I think Freddie Mercury is probably the best of all time in terms of a rock voice. There was a vulnerability to it, his technical ability was amazing, and so much of his personality would come out through his voice. I'm not even a guy to buy Queen records, really, and I still think he's one of the best.

I rejected most of the folk I was exposed to in the Seventies. I came around later to Tom Waits, some parts of Jim Croce, and a lot of Cat Stevens.

I'm interested in where I'm going and the people I am there to see. Going to Cuba was a great example of that, and the succession of going into Cuba, which is not a very easy place to get into, and playing music for people who have never seen a live rock concert outdoors like that.

When all of a sudden you're successful and sought after overnight, you are instantly opened to a lot of sides of humanity that the average person is never going to see. And those can often be pretty disheartening, and it can make somebody pretty lonely.

And if you don't believe the sun will rise, stand alone and greet the coming night in the last remaining light.

Due to irresolvable personality conflicts as well as musical differences, I am permanently leaving the band Audioslave. I wish the other three members nothing but the best in all of their future endeavours.

I learned to read music when I was 10 and did piano and took lessons.

I feel like you're not a real musician or entertainer if you can't go into a room, pick up an instrument and entertain people.

If you wanna make money in music, you're better off being on the business end of it a lot of the time. And also as a musician, if you do make money, it means you had to bite and scratch and kick the whole way to not get ripped off, because at every corner, there's somebody there waiting to trip you up and take a bigger chunk.

The idea of telling the story of the Armenian genocide - or, really, any other genocide - and repeating those stories is really important. I also think it's important to always be exposing the warning signs for what was leading up to it. Those tend to always be the same.

As a child, I was this record collector/listener that would sit in a room and listen to the entire Beatles catalog alone, over and over and over again.

I got a GED based on Catholic school seventh-grade education, really. I didn't make it that far.

I've seen a lot of Pearl Jam shows, and the only reaction I've ever seen is the audience being completely supportive and loving every moment.

I don't get in there and create a character. It's more of a voice that I hear living inside the music.

I never wrote music or arranged songs or lyrics when I was under the influence of anything but coffee. That's not gone away.

Radio and TV can still push a band, but things need to be shaken up. There is the Internet, but mostly what I see there is little kids on YouTube playing music.

My brother brought home 'At San Quentin' when I was about 7, and we played it over and over again.

'Black Hole Sun' was written in a car when I was driving home from the studio one night. Pretty much everything that you hear was written in my head.