Top 213 Quotes & Sayings by Dave Grohl

All I really had was a suitcase and my drums. So I took them up to Seattle and hoped it would work.

Give me something to assemble, I won't look at the directions, I'll try to figure it out by myself. It's why I love Ikea furniture.

Cause when you're sequencing a record, you want the listener to stick with it from beginning to end, and in order to do that, you really have to map out the journey from the first song to the last.

I owe everything to Nirvana. But I can't let that overshadow the future. For the first few years, I didn't even want to talk about Nirvana. Partly because it was just painful to talk about losing Kurt but also because I wanted the Foo Fighters to mean something.

There's always gonna be rock n' roll bands, there's always gonna be kids that love rock n' roll records, and there will always be rock n' roll.

It was that famous joke: What's the last thing the drummer said before he got kicked out of the band? 'Hey, I wrote a song.'

There's a reason why the Foo Fighters don't blast out Nirvana songs every night: because we have a lot of respect for them. You know, that's hallowed ground. We have to be careful. We have to tread lightly. We have talked about it before, but the opportunity hasn't really come up, or it just hasn't felt right.

I'm happy that I have my family, and I'm happy that I had Virginia, where I grew up, to retreat to any time I felt overwhelmed. Whenever there were times when I felt like the rug was being pulled out from under me and I was floating in this crazy space, I would stop and go back to that neighborhood and realize nothing's changed, really.

I had a Super Grover doll growing up. Super Grover was very clumsy, he wasn't very good-looking. But in his own way he'd always save the day.

A lot of people from my generation of music are so focused on playing things correctly or to perfection that they're stuck in that safe place.

I've always been a fan of melody and emotional melancholy, whether it was Rites of Spring or Tears for Fears or Neil Young. If I hear a song that has a sweet melody, I'm a sucker for it, whether it's Linkin Park or Little Richard.

My mother was a public school teacher in Virginia, and we didn't have any money, we just survived on happiness, on being a happy family.

From one generation to the next, The Beatles will remain the most important rock band of all time.

I'd love it if everyone knew one Foo Fighters song.

I once received a cape that was made from the little purple bags that Crown Royal Whisky comes in.

Because you have things like 'American Idol' and you've got radio stations that play music made entirely by computers, it's easy to forget there are bands with actual people playing actual instruments that rock.

It's tough to go to sleep at night, and I wake up after five hours because I feel like I'm wasting time. I just sit up at night and think about what I can do next.

When I listen to the radio, I just hear so much music that doesn't even sound like people. The vocals are all tuned, and the drums are all fake.

I think people should feel encouraged to be themselves.

You know why Foo Fighters have been a band for 20 years? Because I've never really told anybody what I think of them. The last thing you ever want to do is go to therapy with your band.

When you're recording to analog tape, it captures performance and you can't necessarily manipulate that in different ways. It is what it is.

No, there's something about the sing-song cadence of children's music that has its place in rock.

The thing that will never go away is that connection you make with a band or a song where you're moved by the fact that it's real people making music. You make that human connection with a song like 'Let It Be' or 'Long and Winding Road' or a song like 'Bohemian Rhapsody' or 'Roxanne,' any of those songs. They sound like people making music.

There's poetry in being the band that can sell out Wembley but also makes a record in a garage. I don't like doing what people expect me to do.

A lot of the records you buy, there's nothing you can hold in your hand, it's all 1's and 0's, this digital cloud floating in the ether. but with analog albums, you can hold it in your hand.

If there's one thing I'm good at, it's gathering people together to do something fun.

When you're young, you're not afraid of what comes next. You're excited by it.

The most important thing is that you honor that musical integrity, whether you make music that sounds like ABBA or you make music that sounds like Void.

I'm so not macho. It's crazy. My man cave is so not a man cave.

Your personal history is a part of what happens with your hands and your head as you play music.

You know, Nirvana used to start rehearsals with the three of us just jamming. For, like, a half an hour, just noise and freeform crap - and usually it was crap. But sometimes things would come from it, and some songs on Nevermind came from that, and 'Heart Shaped Box' and stuff on 'In Utero' just happened that way.

My songwriting is like extending a hand to the listener.

If it weren't for the Beatles, I would not be a musician.

When you have kids, you see life through different eyes. You feel love more deeply and are maybe a little more compassionate. It's inevitable that that would make its way into your songwriting.

Mick Fleetwood was one of my first interviews. And if you've ever talked to that dude, he's the sweetest guy in the world - he's just a trip.

'Some Kind Of Monster' is such a nightmare for any musician to watch because you're watching a band be honest to each other. Not a good idea, man!

Ladies and gentlemen, god bless America - land of the free, home of the brave.

There are times when I feel like I'm a traveling minister. I'm trying to go out and get kids to pick-up yard sale instruments and change the world.

I was at a New Year's Eve party, and someone asked me how was my year, and I said, 'I honestly think 2011 was the best year of my entire life,' and I actually meant it.

I never needed much, and I never thought I'd get more than what I had. A trip to Burger King was the biggest thing in the world to me. Heaven.

I'm not into albums that are meant to sound perfect.

At 13 years old, I realized I could start my own band. I could write my own song, I could record my own record. I could start my own label. I could release my own record. I could book my own shows. I could write and publish my own fanzine. I could silk-screen my own T-shirt. I could do this all myself.

I stopped doing drugs when I was 20. I was finished with drugs before Nirvana even started.

There's a big difference between falling in love with someone and falling in love with someone and getting married. Usually, after you get married, you fall in love with the person even more.

When there's so much left to do, why spend your time focusing on things you've already done, counting trophies or telling stories about the good old days?

A musician should only sound like what they do, and no two musicians sound the same. It's an individual-feel thing, you know?

When digital technology started becoming the norm, you've got 50, 60, 70 years of recordings on tapes that are just deteriorating. Like, a two-inch reel of recording tape won't last forever. It dissolves. It will disappear.

I taught myself how to play the guitar, I taught myself how to play the drums, and I kind of fake doing both of them. But drumming comes more natural to me, and it just feels better.

I have crazy claustrophobic dreams, weird elevator dreams where the elevator closes in and all of a sudden I am lying down - oh my God, it's a casket. Just freaky stuff like that.

Singing into a microphone and learning to play an instrument - learning to do your craft - that's the most important thing! It's not about what goes on in a computer!

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.

Music will never go away, and I will never stop making music; it's just what capacity or what arena you decide to do it.

I'm kind of claustrophobic... It's not even like enclosed spaces. It's like I hate being stuck in one band, you know? Just being stuck is the biggest drag, for fear that, you know, just that you can't get out.

Who's to say what's a good voice and not a good voice?

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

Guilt is cancer. Guilt will confine you, torture you, destroy you as an artist. It's a black wall. It's a thief.

Wow, I get to wake up again? Ok. You have to make good with what you've got.

I had never been in charge of anything. I'd always worked for someone. I worked for a furniture warehouse. I did masonry. I always had a boss yelling at me. So I'd never been in charge of an organization.

I think my biggest musical hero growing up was probably Ian MacKaye. He set a great example for all of us local musicians. Still, to this day, I see him as the best example of a right-on musician.

When I listen to music these days, and I hear Pro Tools and drums that sound like a machine - it kinda sucks the life out of music.