Top 198 Quotes & Sayings by Eddie Vedder - Page 3

It just seemed like I would. I mean, I didn't know him on a daily basis -- far from it. But, in a way, I don't even feel right being here without him. It's so difficult to really believe he's gone. I still talk about him like he's still here, you know. I can't figure it out. It doesn't make any sense.

Cannot find the comfort in this world.

We're not going to be the coolest rock stars in the world. We're trying to be good musicians.

I got a great grandma. Her name is Pearl, and she was at one time married to an Indian chief, who, in a wonderful crossing of cultures, she integrated some of his, and some of hers, and um, it was a combination of peyote and preserves, and it was this hallucinogenic jam.

Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament and I get excited talking about making record artwork or working with T-shirt designs. The least exciting part for us is talking about the finances; it's like going to the dentist for us. But we at least try to do it in a creative way and put our stamp on it. I can only think that we create something that's worth the value of that dollar.

It seems like every time I start to feel good, something really awful happens. It's like... it's really terrible.

Singing someone else's songs is like keeping your clothes on.

War hurts. It hurts no matter which sides the bombs are falling on.

Wind in my hair, I feel part of everywhere Underneath my being is a road that disappeared Late at night I hear the trees, they're singing with the dead Overhead.

I used to kind of blame someone for not being able to get through that - I'm talking about the addiction part - but I've had a few experiences recently where you don't blame the person anymore.

I believe in the power of music. To me, it isn't just a fad. This is a positive thing.

I think what happens is when something becomes successful, then a lot of people take credit for it in such ways that it takes credit away from you.

Well, maybe it was just that I wasn't going to like anybody because I had to work and I had to explain to my teachers why I wasn't keeping up. I'd fall asleep and things in class and they'd lecture me about the reality of their classroom. I said, 'You want to see my reality?' I opened up my backpack to where you usually keep your pencils. That's where I kept my bills... electric bills, rent... That was my reality.

I learned so much about music by playing this little, miniature songwriting machine [ukulele], especially about melody. The motto is less strings more melody.

I would thank God, but I don't believe in it... It's like a movie that was way too popular. It's a story that's been told too many times and just doesn't mean anything... All I really believe in is this moment, like right now.

I can still write blues songs because I remember everything.

Ladies and gentleman of Florida, this is the real Jeff Ament...take a very good look because there's an imposter running around...if someone comes up to you and says he's Jeff Ament and says he wants to take your pot or wants to take you to a strip club, it's probably not him.

On bended knee is no way to be free lifting up an empty cup I ask silently that all my destinations will accept the one that's me so I can breath Circles they grow and they swallow people whole half their lives they say goodnight to wive's they'll never know got a mind full of questions and a teacher in my soul so it goes.

Are you woman enough to be my man?

I'm not having to show off or make a point about how good I am at doing something. I think I've always kind of been that way.

I didn't respond to the kind of sarcastic tone. It felt like some of the Sarah Palin speech was written as though it were a Saturday Night Live newscast. Maybe that's because she looks very similar . . . She's got her Tina Fey thing going.

I still think that with any candidate, whoever gets elected, there are going to be certain issues or platforms that those who feel strongly can work with him on. You can't be perfect. You can't be the perfect father. You can't be the perfect singer. You can't be the perfect president.

I'm really high... I mean the altitude of course.

I've stepped back a few times and had these crazy epiphanies that we are blessed by having Barack Obama as a candidate at this time in our history. If we were ever to have a man of color become president - and it shouldn't be about that, and it doesn't need to be, because he's qualified on all levels - but if you do think about it, just in terms of that idea of unifying people, it's a huge positive.

If people don't like what I'm doing I really don't have time to hear it. I'm doing something good with my life and I challenge them to do the same.

I would think we have a trajectory of failure on the Republicans' part. When you think about how they managed to make John Kerry look bad during the last election for actually serving in Vietnam, and testifying in Congress after he'd gotten medals, and said that he didn't believe in them or that he didn't believe in the war and that it should stop . . . That they could turn that in negative when their guy, George W. Bush, never even went to Vietnam.

I'm making music for music's sake, and I have an audience I'm proud of.

The word religion has such bad connotations for me, that it's been responsible for wars, and it shouldn't be that way at all, it's just the way the meaning of the word has evolved to me. I have to wonder what we did on this planet before religion.

People say, "I'm tired of hearing about the war in Iraq. I'm tired of hearing about it." And it makes me realize how few people have deeper connections with it, as far as knowing people who have come back paralyzed or who have died, or families that have been affected . . . If they had a connection to it, then they wouldn't be tired of hearing about it.

I remember back in 1994 when the Eagles charged more than $100 for tickets. They said, 'We ain't Pearl Jam.' That's back when records were selling and the Eagles had sold just about as many as anyone on the planet. And years later we're still charging less than them.

No music is going to stop the war. What's going to stop the war is a large amount of body bags, or a large amount of people in the streets, protesting it before it starts.

I am a thief, I am a liar, I am George Bush and my son is an asshole.

I was starting to play the ukulele at the same time I was having all these conversations with [the late Ramones guitarist] Johnny Ramone, these intense tutorials staying up late and listening to the music he grew up on, and picking up what's a great song and what makes a great song. He was all about lists and dissecting songs, like what's a better song by Cheap Trick: "No Surrender" or "Dream Police"? Sometimes you'd be surprised by the answer. It was an interesting dichotomy between hanging out with the godfather of punk rock and starting to play the ukulele. They came together.

I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how to say things. I'm a little exhausted by the process.

Leave it to me as I find a way to be Consider me a satellite, forever orbiting I knew all the rules, but the rules did not know me Guaranteed

Your pot laws are great! But your gun laws are even better!

I'm over smoking. You know, I feel like I've gone on long hikes and gotten to the top of the mountain and I'm looking at something beautiful, some great huge landscape, and there's some of the cleanest air that's on the planet. And then I light up, and say, "Ahh, what a great smoking moment this is!" So it's something evil that's taken over, and I want control over it.

If it's a band I like, I just hope they will survive it all. And I'll admit that if it's crap music, I hope they won't and it'll go away. Simply because there are too many great bands who should be heard in their place.

Competition is healthy, if you can turn it off and on. When someone gets too cocky in victory, that can ruin the positive aspect.

There are times where I would keep three typewriters on a table, and I'd have three complete thoughts going. With computers, you make folders, files - I don't know about those things. I have sheaves of paper polluted with words and paragraphs. I found it a good tool for me. And it keeps your hands strong for guitar playing.

It's understandable why someone would like their entertainment to provide an escape from modern day worries and the reality of war. We feel this record creates a healthy opportunity to process some of these emotions rather than deny them.

Well there's a lot of machines making music today too so you should expect perfection from them! Other than that it's humans programming it which is actually why i still like it. But yeah, that sounds about right. Now what I've got to do is I've got to stop expecting it of myself.

I was able to apply ukulele to whatever I'm trying to write. It's become part of songwriting for me, the knowledge I gained from hearing the melodies come out, and then applying that to guitar or vocals.

If 'little George Dubya Bush' wins, we are going to apply for Canadian citizenship.

These pop songs almost feel like tabloid journalism, in a way. It's c**p that people seem to like. And I don't know if it has meaning. I don't know if one of the pop songs of the summer has any fibre in it. People are consuming it, and is it healthy?... Maybe there's some healthy property or some restorative property that I'm not receiving. It seems like it has a really high fructose content.

The Republicans initially sort of saw George W. Bush as a blank canvas, didn't they? It seems like they interviewed him when he was governor of Texas to see what kind of candidate he could be.

i know someday you'll have a beautiful life. I know you'll be a sun in somebody else's sky. But why can't it be mine?

One thing you might suggest to a young band is don't get involved in any kind of long-term contract because everything changes on a bimonthly basis: The way people hear music and access it, the way it is distributed.

The phone conversation where I haven't had a smoke, it's like trying to talk without using adverbs.

I'm not a college graduate, but I don't know how George W.Bush could have truly believed that the flower of democracy was going to blossom in that part of the world, I mean Iraq - at least in part because the governments there are so tied to religion .

This is still a young man's game, so we have to stay young. Music allows you to do that, especially rock'n'roll.

You feel that no matter what's said in the music or how pointed it may get, the most you can wish for is that it plants a few seeds.

When you're inside and you have no control and when you're the 14-year-old version of Frances Farmer, you know, you have reasons to be angry. You have reasons to be angry when your parents, who are very sheltered themselves, make decisions as to what you should experience in your life and what's normal and what's not.

So much energy comes out of concerts sometimes, especially good ones that are really moving. And that energy, no matter how great the show is, it dissipates within two weeks or a month.

It's important to have a life and spend time outside of those things [music and politics], in order to appreciate what you've achieved as far as just spending time with people you love, and doing things like painting.

At some point, when you read about this factual information that comes out in The New Zealand Herald and it's barely mentioned in The New York Times, then I think you've got to question where this is being manipulated, and where the filters are.

Wait a minute, yes, those are human heads.

I would thank God, but I don't believe in it.

It seems like a necessary balance to life, being part of the community.

The interesting thing is that it seems like George W. Bush would have been happy being the president of anything. He could have been president of Major League Baseball. Less people killed. It wouldn't have affected the world on a planetary level. Sure, there would have been little things. There would have been scandals and kind of numbskull things here and there .