Top 50 John Rzeznik Quotes

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.’

The business of making music is changing so radically because of the Internet. It’s become a lot more democratic in one respect, but in another respect there’s no one left to guide and mentor young bands.

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.

I really love Tegan and Sara.

I mean my mother always wanted us to be individuals. She always instilled that into our brains which was incredibly painful for an adolescent to deal with.

I really love Death Cab.

If people are spending money to hear us, they better go home happy.

I’ve written songs everywhere, and I think the place does matter.

When I’m afraid of something, I’m going at it twice as hard. I don’t believe any fear can be conquered by avoiding it.

Everybody was a democrat where we grew up. It was a blue-collar town and the democrats represented the working class and the unions. But very, very super-conservative Catholic, very proud immigrant community, very stoic.

I hated high school.

We were so heavily influenced by The Replacements and by a lot of hard core bands like Bad Brains, not that we sounded like them but we were trying to play as hard and fast as we could.

I’m one of those guys who always has that kind of underlying anxiety kind of always creeping around in the background.

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 don’t want people messing with my sound, my stuff.

I think about my daughter when I’m doing stuff, and I want to see it through her eyes, and I want her to be proud of me, for what I do.

I don’t write a lot of fiction.

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

Sometimes it doesn’t feel like I’m in control but that I’m going along for the ride. And I’m a lousy passenger; I love to drive.

We started the band when I was about 19 or 20. At that age, it would have been kind of hard to imagine a lot of the stuff that I’ve written. We were playing garage rock. I wanted to dash out three chords and scream. But if you do that for 20 years, what’s the point?

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

I thought ‘Gutterflower’ was a really good record, but the album before that got so big that everyone expected us to go through that again.

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

I enjoy watching Chris Matthews a lot. He reminds me of a throwback to the older school kind of pundits like Tim Russert.

I had good parents, and even though they weren’t around, they were always an influence on me.

We had always put ballads on all of our albums.

One of the things about live music that’s so incredibly important and can’t be replaced and automated is the common focus of a room full of people having that human contact and being immersed in the sensory overload of a rock concert.

A live show is something that can never ever be duplicated on a computer.

I have a very powerful form of alcoholism. I finally gave up and accepted the fact that if I even smell too much booze, I’m going to start drinking again. That’s just how I am.

Never in my life have I met bigger rockstars than Sugar Ray.

I get nervous around famous people.

Whether you are happy or miserable is completely a choice.

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.

The first guitar I ever owned was a Kay SG copy. That cost like $35. Man, that was a terrible guitar.

I just feel really lucky to have had some hits because we had a lot of time where we didn’t have them. It’s better to have a hit. You can ask anyone – U2, Green Day – and they’ll tell you the same thing.

The only way you fail is if you quit. That has always sort of been pounded into my head.

I don’t want to raise someone who feels entitled.

The scary part of alcoholism and addiction and that is until a person is ready to stop, they’re not gonna, and there’s nothing anyone can do. There’s nothing anyone can say or do. And the unfortunate part is sometimes people die because of that.

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

I just want my daughter to be respectful and nice to people. I want her to understand the importance of being humble.

I’ve met very lonely people who have 10,000 friends on Facebook. And it’s just not real. We’ve set up this artificial society in cyberspace. And that’s supposed to be a community, like a real community. It’s supposed to be where people go to get solace or friendship or have fun.

In my family, my earliest memory of you get out of line is – BAM! It was a lot of corporal punishment. But you can’t do that.

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

I think people get a little resentful when they were there at the beginning, when they supported you when you played in front of nobody – which we still do. They get a little resentful when they have to share with new people. That’s why I want to really look out for the people who’ve been with us from the beginning.

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.

A little renovation and reinvention is a positive thing.

Just call us the band that wouldn’t die.

I no longer feel the pressure of trying to write hits for the radio anymore.

I’m ashamed to say, but as a teen, there were times when I had to go to the church and get help.

There’s a lot of shiny, pretty objects out there that when you actually touch them, they just fall apart. And it’s like, you need to be authentic, you need to be yourself.