“The human element of making music is what’s most important.”

I think I’m scared a lot. I’m scared of almost everything. And I’m constantly trying to work my way through each obstacle, whether it’s a present, past, or future relationship.

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.

I think that if you’re passionate about something and you’re driven and you’re focused, then you can pretty much do anything that you want to do in life.

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.

There are so many elements that make a good film. You need a great director who’s driving it.

What I cannot follow are the manic-depressive fluctuations from total control to no control, from the serialization of all elements to chance.

The business of making a photograph may be said in simple terms to consist of three elements: the objective world (whose permanent condition is change and disorder), the sheet of paper on which the picture will be realized, and the experience which brings them together.

In verse one can take any damn constant one likes, one can alliterate, or assone, or rhyme, or quant, or smack, only one MUST leave the other elements irregular.

The very elements of what constitutes good nursing are as little understood for the well as for the sick. The same laws of health, or of nursing, for they are in reality the same, obtain among the well as among the sick.

In every tragedy, an element of comedy is preserved. Comedy is just tragedy reversed.

Self-control is the chief element in self-respect, and respect of self, in turn, is the chief element in courage.

The element of change has been the thing, really. We put out the first one, then the second… then a third LP totally different from them. It’s the reason we were able to keep it together.