Top 106 Quotes & Sayings by Maynard James Keenan

Adam does most of the work when it comes to videos and he basically does the same as I do with the lyrics. The videos are his visual interpretations of our music.

We're five people, five individuals who came together to create something, to make music and to complete each other musically, to form a perfect circle.

I always knew that I wanted to be an artist.

I've always had an affinity for growing things.

I can't be a legend yet. I'm not dead.

I would hope they would be our fellow artists, rather than trying to emulate or idolize clowns like us.

I think everything Joni Mitchell did for music was big.

The idea is, if I can't heal from my art, then how can you heal?

The record company's worst fear is that you'll fall in love or get rich.

Because artists can be extremely eccentric and insane, and unfortunately, the people they hurt the most are the people that are closest to them.

Prescott National Forest is right on the edge of my home in Arizona.

If the education of our kids comes from radio, television, newspapers - if that's where they get most of their knowledge from, and not from the schools, then the powers that be are definitely in charge, because they own all those outlets.

Actually I never did stand up. I'm not that funny.

Once you take yourself too seriously the art will suffer.

I think the biggest problem working with me would be that I'm an only child, and so I have an internal dialogue that goes on that I just assume you can hear.

One of the challenges we set up for 'Puscifer' was to come up with a core identity and see how far we can push it.

I just hope that our fans are people who are inspired by music, and just use our music as a background or inspiration for whatever it is they do.

Everything we release with Tool is inspired by our music.

Reading is more of a left-brain process, and listening to music is a right-brain function.

For me, life is writing and I can do it anywhere. It doesn't matter where I am. I listen. I write. I live.

But you know, I'm the negative-Nancy, curmudgeon, glass-half-empty-with-a-leak-in-it guy - which is basically the fuel that fires me up anyway. Without that, we wouldn't have me.

Because as an only child, you have your own little world.

Just in general, any government throughout history hasn't really wanted its people to be educated, because then they couldn't control them as easily.

I think the media made Manson, turned him into some larger than life figure and surrounded him with mystery and some shady glamour.

Nowadays, you have to sell, like, half a million or a million records just to break even.

But I'm a hot-blooded Italian by nature. Whatever the situation you present, I'm going to make something out of it.

A lot of people into Tool, for some reason, are not interested in humor.

I think people in general have neglected to learn about history.

Music is about listening, the more you play, the more the magic spreads.

I'm a lot easier to work with now than I have been in the past, for sure.

I always knew that I wanted to be creative, that I wanted to create something.

But then it hasn't really been a focus of our government to make us an educated people.

I believe that music is a force in itself. It is there and it needs an outlet, a medium. In a way, we are just the medium.

If you take different mythologies from different cultures, the names may change and the story lines may vary but there is always something in common.

I'm a pessimist. But I'm a pessimist with a sense of responsibility.

You know, I grew up listening to Joni Mitchell.

People have to follow their hearts, and if their hearts lead them to Wal-Mart, so be it.

Shows are really strange. Sometimes you really don't know what to expect.

We're just four guys and we are enjoying what we're doing with Tool.

There is still a future with music, because people want music.

After all, in today's music scene every band seems to steal from other bands.

Everything revolves around the music when it comes to Tool.

Yeah, because I think it's more important just to inspire people to wake up one day and pick up a book and start feeling it out for themselves.

Actors have these delicate appendages called Egos.

Most religious stories and mythologies have some sort of similar root, some sort of global archetypes.

A lot of names in America and Europe have their roots in Latin and Greek words. A lot of them go back to archetypes and their stories.

A circle is the reflection of eternity. It has no beginning and it has no end - and if you put several circles over each other, then you get a spiral.

There were a lot of choices to make and I always picked artist. I never once picked doctor, lawyer, firemen or something like that. It was always artist.

And if you don't live, you have nothing to write about.

I see a lot of patterns in our behavior as a nation that parallel a lot of other historical processes.

Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability To lift an eye to heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here

This body holding me reminds me of my own mortality. Embrace this moment, remember: we are eternal all this pain is an illusion.

So crucify the ego, before its far too late To leave behind this place so negative and blind and cynical, And you will come to find that we are all one mind Capable of all thats imagined and all conceivable. Just let the light touch you And let the words spill through And let them pass right through Bringing out our hope and reason ... before we pine away.

Whenever you try to work through the things that we're trying to work through, that we're addressing, it ends up looking negative. Our goal is nonjudgment, nonfiltered acceptance of everything. So much of our background collectively, especially in the United States, is denying and suppressing and disowning a lot of negativity and the darker areas. You can become swallowed up in it. It's cancerous. The goal should be to define acceptance for everything. To try and consider every aspect. To try to look into the shadows, as well as the light.

Today's woman puts on wigs, fake eyelashes, false nails, sixteen pounds of make-up/shadows/blushes/creams, living bras, various pads that would make a linebacker envious, has implants and assorted other surgeries, then complains that she cannot find a 'real' man

Put a small child in a playpen with an apple and a bunny. If s/he eats the apple and plays with the bunny, s/he's normal;but if s/he eats the bunny and plays with the apple, I'll buy you a new car. Somewhere along the line we must have been TAUGHT to do the wrong thing.

This sort of behavior is left to the psychotic, dogmatic, fundamentalist believers you see on your TV everyday letting off bombs and killing people in the name of God. Beliefs are dangerous. Beliefs allow the mind to stop functioning. A non-functioning mind is clinically dead. Believe in nothing.

Beliefs are dangerous. Beliefs allow the mind to stop functioning. A non-functioning mind is clinically dead. Believe in nothing.

Life is too short not to create something with every breath we draw.

It's the role of us to run our government, the government by the people, for the people, and I don't think our government is listening to the people. It's our role as patriots to question them, because we elected them. And if they're not fairly and accurately representing us, it's the job of the people, the patriots, to take their country back.