"John Lennon has been my idol all my life but he's dead wrong about revolution... find a representative of gluttony or oppression and blow the motherfuckers [sic] head off. [p. 130]"

"I use bits and pieces of others [sic] personalities to form my own. [p. 95]"

"To be positive at all times is to ignore all that is important, sacred or valuable. To be negative at all times is to be threatened by ridiculousness and instant discredibility. [p. 18]"

"Last year, a girl was raped by two wastes of sperm and eggs while they sang the lyrics to our song "Polly". I have a hard time carrying on knowing there are plankton like that in our audience."

"At this point I have a request for our fans. If any of you in any way hate homosexuals, people of different color, or women, please do this one favor for us - leave us the fuck alone! Don't come to our shows and don't buy our records."

"I'll be the first to admit that we're the 90's version of Cheap Trick or the Knack but the last to admit that it hasn't been rewarding."

"Punk Rock (while still sacred to some) is, to me, dead and gone. We just wanted to pay tribute to something that helped us to feel as though we had crawled out of the dung heap of conformity."

"I think they’ll use sounds and tones and music and use it in their virtual reality machines. And just listen to it that way and get the same emotions from it. And then go to a party. There’ll be a virtual reality machine there with a whole bunch of headphones and if you wanna talk to people and listen to the virtual reality machine you can do that and go into the other bedroom and fuck and drink and… but actually I think virtual reality machines will get you high. Technology will be that good. And then there’ll be like virtual reality junkies lying there dead on their couch from OD’ing."

"It’s sad to think what the state of rock and roll will be twenty years from now. It just seems like when rock and roll is dead the whole world’s gonna explode. It’s already so rehashed and so plagariazed that it’s barely alive now. It’s disgusting. I mean, kids don’t even really care about rock and roll as much as they used to, as the other generations have. It’s already turned into nothing but a fashion statement and an identity for kids to use as a tool for them to fuck and have a social life. And at that point I really can’t see music being of any importance to a teenager, really."

"I would like to think there's some purity in us, yeah. Naive - y'know, purposely naive."

"Music comes first; lyrics are secondary. Most of my lyrics are contradictions. I'll write a few sincere lines, and then I'll have to make fun of [them]. I don't like to make it too obvious, because if it is too obvious, it gets really stale. You shouldn't be in people's faces 100% all the time. We don't mean to be really cryptic or mysterious, but I just think that lyrics that are different and weird and spacey paint a nice picture. It's just the way I like art."

"Same thing happened in the punk movement in the late 70's...a punk band would start, play one gig, and get signed to a major label right away, 'cause it [was] a trend. That just shows there are a lot of old school dinosaurs in the record industry who need to be weeded out."

"They (Extreme) surround themselves with these professional, dickhead, commercial rock and roll guys...when they show up at an airport, their manager runs ahead of them and yells at the people greeting them, 'No video! We want a path straight to the van! We don't want any pictures taken!' Y'know, I'm like, "So what?""

"They're claiming that [the grunge bands] finally put Seattle on the map, but, like, what map? ...I mean, we had Jimi Hendrix. Heck, what more do we want?"

"If it was up to me, I'd get more oil tanker drivers drunk. I don’t value music much. I like the Beatles, but I hate Paul McCartney. I like Led Zeppelin, but I hate Robert Plant. I like the Who, but I hate Roger Daltrey."

"I can't play [guitar] like Pete Townshend. The flip side of that is that Pete Townshend could probably never have played like me."

"I'm a much happier guy than a lot of people think I am."

"The thrill and embarrassment of becoming international pop stars was too much, so we opened our mouths and put our foot in sometimes."

"Jocks have completely taken over music... And just to get back at them, I’m going to start playing basketball."

"If you're really a mean person you're going to come back as a fly and eat poop."

"Yeah, I was run out of town. They chased me up to the castle of Aberdeen with torches. Just like the Frankenstein monster. And I got away in a hot air balloon. And I came here to Seattle."

"I wouldn’t wear a tie-dyed tee-shirt unless it was dyed with the urine of Phil Collins and the blood of Jerry Garcia."

"All drugs are a waste of time. They destroy your memory and your self-respect and everything that goes along with your self-esteem. They’re no good at all. But I’m not going to go around preaching against [them]."

"Zits are beauty marks."

"I can’t comment on Soundgarden because I know them personally and I really like them a lot, but I have strong feelings towards Pearl Jam and Alice in Chains and bands like that. They’re obviously just corporate puppets that are just trying to jump on the alternative bandwagon - and we are being lumped into that category."

"I just can’t believe anyone would start a band just to make the scene and be cool and have chicks. I just can’t believe it."

"If I went to jail, at least I wouldn't have to sign autographs."

"We sound like the Bay City Rollers after an assault by Black Sabbath. And, we vomit onstage better than anyone."

"I would like to get rid of the homophobes, sexists, and racists in our audience. I know they're out there and it really bothers me."

"Hope I die before I turn into Pete Townshend."

"Rape is one of the most terrible crimes on earth. And it happens every few minutes."

"I knew I was different. I thought that I might be gay or something because I couldn't identify with any of the guys at all. None of them liked art or music, they just wanted to fight and get laid. It was many years ago but it gave me this real hatred for the average American macho male."

"Rap music is the only vital form of music introduced since punk rock."

"It's really not hard to keep your dignity and sign to a major label...Most people don't have any dignity in the first place."

"I'd like to live off the band, but if not, I'll just retire to Mexico or Yugoslavia with a few hundred dollars, grow potatoes, and learn the history of rock through back issues of Creem magazine."

"In Aberdeen, I hated my best friends with a passion, because they were idiots."

"Nobody dies a virgin… Life fucks us all."

"I don’t have a ton of theory knowledge. I’m inspired by it, but I mostly use my ears to pick up on interesting things, which is what I did back then. So if people come up to me and say, ‘Why don’t you play this note or this scale?’ I honestly don’t know what they're specifically talking about. I play what sounds good. I skipped the whole music theory thing and focused on what was important to me."

"I wouldn’t have been surprised if they had voted me Most Likely to Kill Everyone at a High School Dance."

"Art means to dare — and to have been right."

"Art's the biggest vanity: the assumption that one's view of peace or fright or beauty is permanently communicable."

"The same piece of music alters at each hearing. But oh, the need to repeat and repeat and repeat unchanged the sexual experience."

"The beautiful are shyer than the ugly, for they move in a world that does not ask for beauty."

"Gail Horalek, the mother of a 7th-grade child in Michigan in the US, has made international headlines by complaining that the unabridged version of Anne Frank's diary is pornographic and should not be taught at her daughter's school. At issue for Horalek is a section detailing Anne's exploration of her own genitalia, material originally omitted by Anne's father, Otto Frank, when he prepared the manuscript for publication in the late 40s I had to look up what age kids are in the 7th grade. They're 12 to 13! They're only about a year younger than Anne was when she wrote of her vagina: "There are little folds of skin all over the place, you can hardly find it. The little hole underneath is so terribly small that I simply can't imagine how a man can get in there, let alone how a whole baby can get out!" There cannot be a 13-year-old girl on the planet who hasn't had a root around and arrived at this exact stage of bafflement."

"Some of us read Anne Frank's diary on Robben Island and derived much encouragement of it."

"One single Anne Frank moves us more than the countless others who suffered just as she did, but whose faces have remained in the shadows. Perhaps it is better that way: If we were capable of taking in the suffering of all those people, we would not be able to live."

"Of the multitude who throughout history have spoken for human dignity in times of great suffering and loss, no voice is more compelling than that of Anne Frank."

"Here's how much people love dead Jews: Anne Frank's diary, first published in Dutch in 1947 via her surviving father, Otto Frank, has been translated into seventy languages and has sold more than 30 million copies worldwide, and the Anne Frank House now hosts well over a million visitors each year"

"Anne Frank's legacy is still very much alive and it can address us fully, especially at a time when the map of the world is changing and when dark passions are awakening within people."

"(Have you related to any other stories of children or adolescents, of young people growing up?) There was The Catcher in the Rye, the Diary of Ann Frank... Yes, actually I have, definitely."