Top 70 Trent Reznor Quotes

When Twitter made its way to my radar I looked at it as a curiosity, then started experimenting. I approached that as a place to be less formal and more off-the-cuff, honest and ‘human.’

When I first played ‘Wolfenstein 3D,’ it blew my mind. It had a big impact on me.

In 2010, aside from that niche of music that I have no interest in – Black Eyed Peas territory, disposable pop stuff – there’s almost an incentive to go back to making music as adventurous and groundbreaking as you can, because nobody gets a big hit anymore.

I’ll be honest, watching the music industry collapse has been demoralizing and disheartening at times.

I think early on in my career, I was heavily inspired by bands like Throbbing Gristle and Test Dept, and films of David Lynch, for example, where the soundscape plays a very important role in the listening experience.

Apparently, the image of our president is as offensive to MTV as it is to me.

The band Grizzly Bear, I think they’re excellent. There’s a beauty and a musicality there that I wish would have been in vogue in the late ’80s, when I was forming bands.

I don’t have a family. I’d like to have one. I just haven’t somehow gotten around to it yet.

When I was growing up, rock & roll helped give me my sense of identity, but I had to search for it.

What is exciting is taking back the excitement of being able to debut something to an audience in exactly the way you want to.

I aspire to make a record that sounds better 10 listens in than it does after two, and still, at 50 listens, you’re picking out things that add a depth and a thoughtfulness to it; there’s enough in there that you can still be extracting pieces out of it.

Why don’t the Grammys matter? Because it feels rigged and cheap – like a popularity contest that the insiders club has decided.

I think it’s easy to make impenetrable music that nobody can get, and you can hide behind that sometimes.

I think the thing I’ve always tried to do is – and I didn’t plan it, it just started to come out that way – is try to make challenging music that flirts with accessibility.

When I sit down to make a set list I usually think, ‘We’ll build it up here, take it down here, go into a quiet section here, explode here,’ in a way that there’s a flow and it doesn’t feel like shuffle on an iPod.

For me, ‘The Social Network’ isn’t about Facebook. It certainly isn’t about how people use it. It’s about a flawed character and his pursuit of that grand idea that defines him and validates his life and how far he’ll go to get it, and the repercussions that come as a result of that – what he gives up in the process.

I was excited by the process of Pandora, which I still think is a decent product. Not as great in actuality as it sounds. After the first hour, its weaknesses start to show up.

MTV can’t do less for me, let’s put it that way. I’m fine without them.

I was up above it. Now, I’m down in it.

My life has two modes. One is sitting around writing and contemplating or building things. The other is execution mode. It takes a while to switch from one to the other.

In my life, I was always floating around the edge of the dark side and saying what if take it a little bit too far, and who says you have to stop there, and what’s behind the next door. Maybe you gain a wisdom from examining those things. But after a while, you get too far down in the quicksand.

In my nothing, you were everything, to me.

I’m not Prince or Rivers Cuomo, who brags about having hundreds of great songs.

I don’t even know why I’m saying this in an interview situation, but I always feel like I’m not good enough for some reason. I wish that wasn’t the case, but left to my own devices, that voice starts speaking up.

I found that when I was putting my own music out, with my Twitter feed as the pure marketing budget, I’m preaching to the choir.

I realized when I was 23 that I had never really tried anything.

It’s not like I ride a broom into interviews. I don’t hang upside down with a cape on.

I think the reason I was 23 before I ever wrote a song was that I was afraid of testing myself. What would I do if I discovered I didn’t have anything to say?

You know, if nobody knows who you are, nobody’s going to buy your record.

I miss how a record label can help spread the word that you have something out.

In Nine Inch Nails, I’ve been the guy calling the shots since inception. I’d gotten used to that.

I did not grow up in a cosmopolitan environment. I grew up in a little town in the middle of nowhere, pre-Internet, pre-college radio.

I’d much rather be worrying about playing that note in tune, and picking out the best way to arrange the song, rather than thinking about pricing for the download. It’s not art.

When I’m on stage, the songs that we’ve chosen to play from the back catalog are things that still resonate with me, and matter to me. And the songs that I couldn’t be a part of, we don’t play anymore.

Now that I have a thousand albums in my car all the time, I listen to more music. I was too lazy; I always had the same five discs in there. I’d never think to change it.

Musicians have always adopted Macs.

I tend to not listen to my own music when I’m not working on it. No real reason other than it’s nice to get away from it.

I think there’s something strangely musical about noise.

I would love to be looked at some day – and I’m not ever saying I’m at this level – but I’d love to be mentioned in the same breath as a Bowie or an Eno. Those are the people that I admire artistically, their career trajectory, the integrity throughout their career, the bravery of their career.

Schoolwork came easy to me. I learned to play piano effortlessly. I was coasting.

And when the day arrives I’ll become the sky and I’ll become the sea and the sea will come to kiss me for I am going home. Nothing can stop me now.

My input for the first 16, 17 years of my life was AM radio, FM radio – pretty mainstream stuff. Rolling Stone was probably as edgy as it got.

People want to listen to a lot of music and do whatever they want with it. They don’t want DRM, they don’t want subscriptions. They don’t want a player that only can do this but can’t do that and you only have one copy. They don’t want that. You know? I don’t want that.

You can punch a wall or write a song. Just as painful either way, but you have something to show for it at the end of the day with a song.

With a Nine Inch Nails show, I’m building on a legacy that comes with a certain set of expectations. I have to push that forward, I have to reinvent myself, I have to feel current and valid.

Jumping through any hoop or taking advantage of any desperate situation that comes up just to sell a product is harmful. It is.

You’re standing onstage in a sold-out arena with people singing your music, and you feel like the loneliest person in the world. Because here’s a party that, essentially, it’s for you. And you still somehow feel like you don’t belong there. Those people all have their lives and go back home.

Sometimes the worst thing that can happen is, ‘Oh, I’m on stage playing a song,’ because you’re daydreaming about something else, you’re on autopilot. You have to fight that.

Nine Inch Nails is like building an army to go conquer. We build it, then we play, and we have to play so much to validate building it, financially. It leads to getting burn-out because a tour that would be fun if it lasted three weeks has to last 15 weeks.

Being a rock & roll star has become as legitimate a career option as being an astronaut or a policeman or a fireman.

I realized that I was afraid to really, really try something, 100%, because I had never reached true failure.

As long as it feels valid to me and feels sincere, I’ll do what I do under the moniker of Nine Inch Nails if it’s appropriate. I would hate to think I would ever be in a position where I’m faking it to get a paycheck.

When I’m writing music, I’m not playing a character. I’m not Alice Cooper or Gene Simmons or someone like that, who has acknowledged that they are writing music for a character.

Spotify – I met those guys before they launched in America and was wildly excited about the idea. ‘Wow, this is all the music in the world, for a flat fee.’

When your culture comes from watching TV every day, you’re bombarded with images of things that seem cool, places that seem interesting, people who have jobs and careers and opportunities. None of that happened where I was. You’re almost taught to realize it’s not for you.

If you can use a search engine, you can find any piece of music that’s been recorded for free. I’m not saying that’s right, but it’s a fact, and I’m surprised that more people don’t accept or acknowledge that and try to adapt in some way.

When David Fincher called me up a few years ago and said, ‘Hey, I’d like you to score this film ‘The Social Network,’ I said, ‘I’m flattered, but I really don’t have any real experience scoring films, and I’d rather not screw it up on a high-profile project. And I like you and I don’t want to compromise our friendship.’

I need boundaries. In the modern studio there are a bunch of instruments around me, and I can simulate anything I can’t play, so sometimes the palette feels too big.