“When Nirvana became popular, you could very easily slip and get lost during that storm. I fortunately had really heavy anchors – old friends, family.”

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.

Love is the only thing that we can carry with us when we go, and it makes the end so easy.

It is so much easier to live placidly and complacently. Of course, to live placidly and complacently is not to live at all.

He always pictured himself a libertarian, which to my way of thinking means “I want the liberty to grow rich and you can have the liberty to starve”. It’s easy to believe that no one should depend on society for help when you yourself happen not to need such help.

Every once in a while I think, ‘What am I doing out here running, busting myself up? Life could be so much easier. The other guys are out having fun, doing other things, why not me?’

It’s easy to have principles when you’re rich. The important thing is to have principles when you’re poor.

Poetry? That’s easy. I just cut the vein, and let it bleed.

The easiest thing to exist, love. The most rare feeling, love. Irony?

Some men are tempted to violate secrecy from the uneasiness secrecy gives them, and others, merely to impress you with the extent of their confidence.