Top 55 Shavo Odadjian Quotes

I don’t want every member of System to have their own label. It will be like a circus.

System of a Down is my lifeline. It’ll never go away.

People either hate us or love us.

I used to always wear Vans back in the day. I had every type of Vans and Converse there was. I was a Chucks guy and a Vans guy.

We don’t preach, but we just tell you what we think, and it provokes thought.

Man, George Clinton taught me some serious lessons! For a couple of years we were hanging out almost every other day. He’d stay at my house sometimes because we were working so much.

There’s nothing anti-patriotic about wanting peace. There really isn’t.

When something’s taboo, the kids get a sense where they want to do it because it’s taboo.

We are always writing music.

When I listen to a band like Pink Floyd, I don’t know the names of the individual songs, I know the full albums. That’s what we want for our albums.

I’m kind of right in the middle – I’m an Independent, not far Left or far Right. But I don’t think everyone needs to know about that, do they?

I come from the ’90s where there was rap-rock and I was never a huge fan of it. I loved Rage, I loved some of the other stuff that was going on, but it got really oversaturated and it got kind of cheesy at some point – we can all say that.

I like to make music and anytime I come up with something good, I’ll record it as a video on my phone.

Yeah, I like the Kardashians a lot.

I can’t force anybody on stage. I can’t force anybody into a studio. I can’t force anyone anywhere.

We’re not into the rock/rap movement.

There’s a lot of bands that don’t release an album every year. There’s a lot of bands that take three, four or five years off here and there, but they don’t say ‘hiatus,’ so no one really notices it.

I think we all want maybe ‘Lost in Hollywood’ to one day be a single.

We’re four guys that play music. We’re not a part of any genre. We just happened to have come out in 1998.

I don’t like record company people very much, so I don’t want to be one of them.

When I moved from Armenia to L.A., I moved to North Kingsley Drive. That was my street, that’s where I grew up and I saw everything there. I started skateboarding there. I witnessed homelessness, the poor, you know, I noticed gangs. I learned about friendship.

We’re a band that keeps writing and recording – we don’t know when it’s over.

RZA helped me make my first beat, and he rhymed over it, and that made the ‘Babylon A.D.’ soundtrack. That first track was very raw and unmixable, but it’s so anthemic. After that, I started learning how to make tracks. It was a process, but once you stop learning you’re dead.

The people who hate us, I don’t think they are wrong. That’s what they think, and I promote thought.

Well here’s how I look at it, I’ve always been someone that’s liked to have things on my plate, it just keeps me going.

I believe a band has to evolve rather than making the same album over and over again, because if you do, sooner or later people are going to get tired of you.

I would never want to put my name on a crappy thing. So, everything that has my name on it is pretty high quality: I put my heart and soul into it.

I want to be proud of everything I do.

Oh, I know the Kardashians quite well.

If something’s good once, it’s always going to be cool. It just has to be quality.

I’ve always been someone that always likes to do things, and I don’t like to be sitting around: I get nervous when I sit around.

I have a lot of ideas for videos, and I want to pursue directing. This is one of the goals I have always had.

I haven’t sold one painting. I have either given them as gifts or just kept them. It’s like babies you know. It’s, like, hard to sell a baby.

I started a project with the RZA back in ’09 called Achozen, but we never actually dropped that.

I used to be very good friends with Kanye.

I like having things to do. I like to always be busy.

I’m one of the most, like, ‘wanting-to-tour’ guys in the band.

If I plan to write, I won’t be able to write anything good. I just need to kind of jam and let things come.

So the universe is the sacred silence and sleep, and the kids are the disorder. So how do you control the disorder in that universe? You can’t. To me, that’s ‘Toxicity.’

I never wanted to be in a heavy-metal band.

We played a 600-seater in France that was amazing. I got so excited when I saw the place. Just vibewise, with the crowd, it was amazing.

The industry is so oversaturated with these fly-by-night rappers who come in and come out. People who say ‘rock is dead,’ it’s because of that. It’s because of what’s out there saturating the industry.

We want to sound like a band you can’t clone or even categorize. We like to throw everyone off.

When I hear a song, I close my eyes and see a lot of stuff happen, and I love making those visuals come to life. It’s always been a passion.

Every human being sees something different in a painting, so I want every single person to have their own thoughts about our songs.

Creativity, I think, is within you.

I didn’t join a band and didn’t get famous to stop playing music.

I would skate in the ’80s. I started skating with Jordan 1s, and that was a big deal. I looked different, because no one was getting with Jordan 1s. That became my little thing. I grew up in Hollywood.

A band is a real band if they can play not just their songs, but they can just play.

I don’t like videos that explain the song. I like it to be kind of abstract, like a painting.

I’ve always questioned death and birth and life. Where do we go? Are we here now? Or is this just one of the lives that we live?

I listen to a lot of Eighties hip-hop. I listened to a lot of Ice-T.

Chop Suey!’ was really heavy, but it had a lot of melodic parts. It was fast and frenzy.

I did Achozen with RZA and that was straight hip-hop.

When I was a kid, I used to make skateboarding videos, and I would pretend to be in a band and make rock videos that I’d edit with two VCRs.