Top 113 Quotes & Sayings by Matt Skiba

When I agreed to do the Blink shows, I said that I'd do it as long as they were willing to practise every day.

To worship the devil, you have to believe in it first.

The Ramones all hate each other, and they did it for decades. I wouldn't be able to do that. That would be like working at the bank or something.

I have never played in a ska band.

People think we're always dark and gloomy, and we're not.

Fear is sort of like jealousy. It's an unnecessary emotion.

I really like a lot of the old 2-tone ska. I definitely went through a phase where I was into The Specials and The Busters. But a lot of the ska revival - I never really have had an interest in that.

Jesus was not born on December 25th. There's carbon evidence of it. That freaks people out.

There is sort of an unspoken 'no skateboarding' clause on tour that I break pretty often.

I was a bicycle messenger when Alkaline Trio was formed as a way to make ends meet before the band became a career, and I've just always been a cyclist - I BMX'd, and then I got really into - through messengering - I got really into road bikes and fixed gears, which I still have.

The Church of Satan was something, aesthetically, that we were always really fascinated with and wanted to emulate. I think it's a good look.

They're great players. I'm not a Blues Traveler fan, though. I get it, but it's not for me.

The first line of the song is always the hardest thing to write. And then after that, the song should - unless it sucks - it should write itself.

Being on Epic, it wasn't like we got signed to a multi-million-dollar deal.

At an early age I told myself I would never quit skating; I would never quit riding BMX and being a motorcycle junkie. I just can't stop doing those things.

They are one of my favorite bands and one of my first musical loves: Devo.

The feeling that you want the listener to get, you should get yourself when you first hit that chord, and that melody comes to mind.

I've done some stuff with Glenn Danzig before, and while I can't really say that we're friends, we're friendly acquaintances.

For Alkaline Trio, Chicago is our hometown. The band started there. Even though we all live in different cities now, we still call Chicago home, and it's always really exciting to come back and play for our best crowd.

I go with what I know and what I see, and I believe in reality.

In this day and age, though, no matter how many people you play for, if you're playing with a band like Blink, millions of people will see it thanks to YouTube and everything recording it.

With every inch of my energy, I wanted Fyre not to happen. I put all the electricity and energy in my body against that thing happening.

There was some real bad alternative - 'alternative' - stuff that came out in the '90s that's completely cringe-worthy.

With Alkaline Trio, we are who we are. We never really feel too confined, but when we get together, there is an Alkaline Trio sound, and when I go off and do something on my own, there is an element of freedom that I don't have with the Trio.

Death isn't something that should necessarily be glorified, but I also don't think it's something that people need to be afraid of. It's just the way it is. There's nothing we can do about it.

I love being in Blink!

All of my HH Jags have Ducati stickers on 'em.

A cousin of mine was a graphic designer, and he took me as a kid to see Flesh for Lulu and Social Distortion in 1988 in Chicago.

The very first show I ever saw was The Judds, and that influenced me to not play country music.

When you're 20, you think you know a lot more than you do.

For me, it's about eating a bunch of fruit and exercising, which opens up the creativity, makes it easier to give ideas a chance and bubble to the surface. I'm no angel, but it helps me, as does hiking, heading to the ocean to catch some waves - for me, sweating it out is definitely good for the creative process.

I've written songs about love or about a relationship, but never just, 'I love you.'

I don't personally feel that I've lost my fire.

My parents have always been very supportive. But now that I play in Blink, all of my parents' friends are so jazzed that it makes my folks excited.

The Sekrets record is very much me, and Dan's Emergency Room is very much him. And then Alkaline Trio is very much ours.

As far as, like, the moon landing... did we go there? I believe so. Is it everything that we're told? I don't think so.

My attraction to the Church of Satan... is the same thing that initially attracted me to punk rock. It was something that wasn't very entirely popular, and it was sort of like the adversary to mainstream culture and beliefs.

We've had kids come to our shows and ask us why we hate Jesus. It's like, 'Well, we don't hate Jesus at all. We just think religion is silly, and it's a really popular thing, but that doesn't mean we have to agree with it.'

I think that the more that you play and the more instruments you play and the better you get at them, then you will be better off for it as a guitarist.

I think for us - and for a lot of people in the Church of Satan - we definitely like ruffling people's feathers and poking fun at organized religion a little bit.

It's never been about what we want others to see: it's about what we want to see; it's about what we want to do. We only have a career because of our fans, but we have to keep making music for the reason we started making music.

I consider myself a pagan and a witch.

The really smart conspiracies are the ones that explain, 'This is why this is plausible,' not, 'This is what happened.' If it makes sense and if it's possible, I'd investigate it.

Rock n' roll is the Devil's music.

We definitely like to write songs about darker things, but we like to think of it as a celebration of the evil ideas that run through everybody's head.

I'm thankful for everything good and bad that happened to our band.

Dallas is a good town. I spent a lot of time there as a kid. It always nice to come back.

The Devil is fun.

As a kid, I took piano lessons, and I didn't like it. It wasn't cool. I was into Duran Duran and rock music. I didn't have any interest in piano. I did it for three years, and because of piano, I learned percussion. I learned scales. I learned how to sing. Piano gives you all of the basics of those things.

Pennywise are legends and gentlemen and maniacs.

Being a drummer definitely influences how I play guitar. And then piano influences drumming and vice versa.

I went through some pretty rough patches in my life, and I've come out of them a stronger, more inspired, and energetic person.

Never had a mullet.

I'm in Alkaline Trio; I guess I get to rip off myself. I give myself permission.

I collect motorcycles and art.

I'm really thankful for the time that I grew up in that we didn't have cell phones, and we made a lot of our own fun.

I think people hear the words 'transcendental meditation' and 'paganism,' and that's almost worse because it's real. Those are real things. Those are absolute energies. Satanism is like Halloween. Transcendental meditation and having a realization of how we really are - whether we want to be or not - we live in a pagan culture.

We were fans of Green Day and Nirvana or whatever, but the bands we really loved were Chicago bands that didn't really sound anything like Alkaline Trio.

While I was in Chicago, I rode my bike everywhere.

I think I'm a man about the things I need to be a man about, but I get paid to play, pretty much. I do what I love for a living, and I also get to build BMX bikes in my spare time.