“There’s a plaque on our wall that says we’ve sold over 65 million albums, and I don’t feel I’ve accomplished anything. I feel like I’m just getting started.”

I never took guitar lessons. I took classical piano lessons from the age of six when we lived in Holland.

Eventually you’ll take the phrases and rhythm patterns you’ve copped and begin to put your own mark on them.

Practice. I used to sit on the edge of my bed with a six-pack of Tuborg. My brother would go out to party and get laid, come home at 3am., and I would still be playing with myself.

The one thing I do have is good ears. I don’t mean perfect pitch, but ears for picking things up. I developed my ear through piano theory, but I never had a guitar lesson in my life, except from Eric Clapton off of records.

I’m just a normal schmo like anyone else.

I’ve had a hip replacement, I’ve beaten cancer, I had my hand operation, and I stopped drinking. Something inside of me just went, ‘I’m done.’

Everything comes to me while I’m sitting on the pot.

I grew up on a lot of early Beatles, DC5, Cream, Clapton, Page, Beck and Hendrix.

Nirvana was huge, but it didn’t appeal to everyone.

Best believe that needle hurt you Best to see these true colors Than follow one of your false virtues A little secret to make you think: Why is the crazy stuff we never say, poetry in ink?

The name Van Halen, the family legacy, is going to go on long after I’m gone.

The piano is a universal instrument. If you start there, learn your theory and how to read, you can go on to any other instrument.

I boil the strings so they stretch.

There are really three parts to the creative process. First there is inspiration, then there is the execution, and finally there is the release.

The stainless-steel frets were a major breakthrough, because of the amount of playing and bending that I do. I have to get my guitars refretted every couple of months.

Rock stars come and go. Musicians play until they die.

It may be difficult to understand why a test comes our way, but we must never forget that the test is accomplishing refining and purification.

As long as you are alive, you will either live to accomplish your own goals and dreams or be used as a resource to accomplish someone else’s.

No one ever gets far unless he accomplishes the impossible at least once a day.

Think back 5 years ago. Think of where you’re at today. Think ahead 5 years and what you want to accomplish. Be Unstoppable.

Whatever you do, don’t play it safe. Don’t do things the way they’ve always been done. Don’t try to fit the system. If you do what’s expected of you, you’ll never accomplish more than others expect.

Much more is accomplished by a single word of the Our Father said, now and then, from our heart, than by the whole prayer repeated many times in haste and without attention.

If I’ve made it a little easier for artists to work in violence, great! I’ve accomplished something.

We do today what they won’t, so tomorrow we accomplish what they can’t.