“As I get older… I start to realize that life ain’t half bad. Each year, I’m amazed that I’m still alive. I don’t take any of this for granted, I’m a lucky dude.”

It’s funny, there aren’t too many musicians that also moonlight as studio engineers. There’s a few – the really brilliant ones.

Always have the highest bar for yourself.

In this day and age, when you can use a machine or computer to simulate or emulate what people can do together, it still can’t replace the magic of four people in a room playing.

Rock stars are like sports stars: If you snap your ankle, you’re done.

To me the most important thing is getting into a studio and making an album that is 12 or 14 amazing songs, getting up onstage, and making people happy by livening the rock.

When I joined Nirvana, I was the fifth or sixth drummer – I don’t know if they’d ever had a drummer they were totally happy with. And they were strangers. There was never much of a deeper connection outside of the music.

I love to play music. So why endanger that with something like drugs?

People are so into digital recording now they forgot how easy analog recording can be.

If you play a Nickleback song backwards you’ll hear messages from the devil. Even worse, if you play it forwards you’ll hear Nickleback.

Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It’s a black wall. It’s a thief.

We only do what feels right. If something feels forced or contrived, then we pull back. We remain the Foo Fighters.

From one generation to the next, The Beatles will remain the most important rock band of all time.

It’s not until recently that I could even imagine myself as an adult. But these kids today, they look at me like I’m Neil Young. Nirvana is the band their parents listen to.

I was ready to quit music. It felt to me like music equalled death.

Wow, I get to wake up again? Ok. You have to make good with what you’ve got.

Through Kurt I saw the beauty of minimalism and the importance of music that’s stripped down.

When the world’s against me is when I really come alive.

The novel is the one bright book of life. Books are not life. They are only tremulations on the ether. But the novel as a tremulation can make the whole man alive tremble.

The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon.

The last time I felt alive – I was looking into your eyes. Breathing your air, touching your skin, saying goodbye. The last time I felt alive, I was dying.

Give up all hope of peace so long as your mother-in-law is alive.

I’ve been so unhappy for years, so unhappy, I don’t understand how a human being can be so unhappy all the time and still be alive.

Be glad you’re even alive. Be furious you’re going to die.

The world is getting to be such a dangerous place, a man is lucky to get out of it alive.