“There’s not like this separate caste system where it’s like, “I’m the musician, you’re the audience. Never the two shall meet.” It was a case where it was like, “Hey, you know what? I’m on your level, man.””

I think people are intimidated by me, and I don’t know why. Sometimes even my own bandmates can be intimidated, or irritated, by me.

Usually I’m not really conscious of what’s going on. I don’t have a lot of memories onstage. At all.

Musicians and artists are not… it’s not like politicians or something where you can’t really affect them.

Audiences tend to dig the earlier stuff by any given musician, and the artists themselves always tend to prefer the thing that they’re doing now.

I think the younger kids need to realize there’s this whole forgotten 90s that people don’t really talk about.

I like my solitude, and I’m a strong-willed person; I’m a very hard-to-be-around person sometimes, I guess.

I’m not the guy in the dress with the blood and the unrequited gay whatever – which, according to my psychiatrist, my gayness is a form of narcissism but you’ll have to ask him about that.

I don’t have anything to prove.

You’re always as a musician trying to shock yourself or create music that’s maybe even too weird for your own taste.

Everybody just needs to realize that when you write something you’re just in one mood. I was told I needed to write it and it was overdue; I don’t even remember what day it was.

I was only in the public eye because I was annoying. You know how neurotic people may ask for one thing when they may really want another thing? It was like I was asking for attention, but I didn’t really want attention.

I’m glad to play for them. But I’d rather play for an audience where half of them were not into it than one where all of them were pretending to be into it, for fear of being uncultured.

I’ve always wanted to learn how to paint, too. I’d like to try everything, but music is my reason for living.

And then you realize that your friends – your real-life friends – it’s not that they become fanboys of you but they become more interested in what you’re doing than how you’re doing.

It’s just different today. Nobody seems to last too long these days. I wouldn’t know how to get started today.

I don’t have the capacity to write stuff consciously. When I do, it’s really awful.

The audience’s reactions are more important: if people believe in the love story, it’s because they love how we’ve acted. That’s the most beautiful award. It’s very important for me, people appreciating what I do.

People en masse have always been wonderful to me. I truly have a great love for an audience. I want to give them two hours of just pow.

Audiences have kept me alive.

We want our sound to go into the soul of the audience, and see if it can awaken some little thing in their minds. ‘Cause there are so many sleeping people.

I’ve been in love with audiences all my life, and I’ve tried to please. I hope I did.

I truly have a great love for an audience, and I used to want to prove it to them by giving them blood.

What I appreciate is acknowledging to the audience that I think they have brains.

When people told the audience that [Sam Kinison] was good, he was accepted after that.