Top 204 Quotes & Sayings by Trent Reznor - Page 2

It probably wasn't until Nine Inch Nails played the first Lollapalooza that I actually went to a festival.

MTV can't do less for me, let's put it that way. I'm fine without them.

Musicians have always adopted Macs.

I'm not Prince or Rivers Cuomo, who brags about having hundreds of great songs.

I think the thing I've always tried to do is - and I didn't plan it, it just started to come out that way - is try to make challenging music that flirts with accessibility.

I don't even know why I'm saying this in an interview situation, but I always feel like I'm not good enough for some reason. I wish that wasn't the case, but left to my own devices, that voice starts speaking up.

I watch people, friends of mine, and see how they portray themselves online and I find interesting that it's kind of a hyper-real version of yourself, how you'd like to be seen, in a way.

Frankly, I have always dreaded writing - there always seemed to be pain involved, unpleasant self-examination and a lot of fear.

For me, 'The Social Network' isn't about Facebook. It certainly isn't about how people use it. It's about a flawed character and his pursuit of that grand idea that defines him and validates his life and how far he'll go to get it, and the repercussions that come as a result of that - what he gives up in the process.

I love David Fincher and I think he's a genius.

With a Nine Inch Nails show, I'm building on a legacy that comes with a certain set of expectations. I have to push that forward, I have to reinvent myself, I have to feel current and valid.

The music I always liked as a kid was stuff I could bum out to and realize, 'Hey, someone else feels that way, too.' So if someone can do that with my music, it's mission accomplished.

When I was growing up, rock & roll helped give me my sense of identity, but I had to search for it.

I lived a fairly average, anonymous small-town life till I got the idea to do Nine Inch Nails. Then I locked myself in a studio for a year, and then got off the tour bus two years after that, and I didn't know who I'd turned into.

If there used to be 100 people at a major working on a record, now there are 18, but they're the good ones. There's a lean, mean hunger.

When fame presented itself to me, I was not at a point in my life where I was equipped to deal with it.

Being a rock & roll star has become as legitimate a career option as being an astronaut or a policeman or a fireman.

My music, I hope, takes 100% of your concentration. I know how to do that.

I aspire to make a record that sounds better 10 listens in than it does after two, and still, at 50 listens, you're picking out things that add a depth and a thoughtfulness to it; there's enough in there that you can still be extracting pieces out of it.

Sometimes the worst thing that can happen is, 'Oh, I'm on stage playing a song,' because you're daydreaming about something else, you're on autopilot. You have to fight that.

Being in a band with my wife, I'm very aware of the multitude of ways that can go wrong. We're best friends and are interested in the same things, so it's natural to make music together.

After coming from a major label, I realized the entire business has been decimated, and you can't look to labels to try to figure it out because they don't even use the technology, and they're oblivious to how people consume music these days.

It's not like I ride a broom into interviews. I don't hang upside down with a cape on.

I doubt I'll ever pay someone to do a remix again, because there's some amazing stuff just coming out of bedrooms.

I often find myself listening to a record because a lot of people or magazines have told me it's good and I'm supposed to like it, and I try to stay in touch with what's happening and I'm also a fan of music. I find myself trying to like something that I really don't think is that great.

Fear has governed my life, if I think about it.

When I was growing up, the people who liked the Beatles, I didn't like, so I didn't pay attention to them.

I don't have to save rock. I don't even like rock that much.

When Twitter made its way to my radar I looked at it as a curiosity, then started experimenting. I approached that as a place to be less formal and more off-the-cuff, honest and 'human.'

There's always been an element of 'right time, right place' to Nine Inch Nails. When we stepped onstage at Woodstock '94, I could sense it. I get goosebumps thinking about it now. Like, 'I don't know how we did this, but somehow we've touched a nerve.'

I believe sometimes you have a choice in what inspiration you choose to follow and other times you really don't.

I'll be honest, watching the music industry collapse has been demoralizing and disheartening at times.

The band Grizzly Bear, I think they're excellent. There's a beauty and a musicality there that I wish would have been in vogue in the late '80s, when I was forming bands.

What is exciting is taking back the excitement of being able to debut something to an audience in exactly the way you want to.

My advice today, to established acts and new-coming acts, is the same advice I'd give to myself: pause for a minute, and really think about 'What is your goal? Where do you see yourself?'

The idea of politics is just so uninteresting to me - I've never paid much attention to it. I don't believe things can really change. It doesn't matter who's president. Nothing really gets resolved. I don't know. I guess that's not the right attitude to take.

Live interaction with a crowd is a cathartic, spiritual kind of exchange, and it's intensified at a festival.

I do remember my first purchase: the Partridge Family's 'Greatest Hits.' I got it for $3.99 at a failed chain of pre-Wal-Mart-type stores called Jamesway. God, I'm old.

Wal-Mart went on a rampage years ago insisting all music they carry be censored of all profanity and 'clean' versions be made for them to carry.

Now U2's not my favorite band, but I do respect them, and in the same way I respect Bowie: They change without fear of change.

When your culture comes from watching TV every day, you're bombarded with images of things that seem cool, places that seem interesting, people who have jobs and careers and opportunities. None of that happened where I was. You're almost taught to realize it's not for you.

It's a humbling thing, having kids. One of my sons came to rehearsals, and now he says Daddy's job is 'go play loud music.'

My dad and I are best friends. He's pretty much responsible for the way I turned out. He would provide a little artistic inspiration here and there in the form of a guitar, stuff like that.

I don't have a family. I'd like to have one. I just haven't somehow gotten around to it yet.

Anyone who's an executive at a record label does not understand what the Internet is, how it works, how people use it, how fans and consumers interact - no idea. I'm surprised they know how to use e-mail.

One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract. I said, 'Wait - you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it?'

I'm sure there is a group of people that assume Nine Inch Nails is just noise and chaos - or whatever it might be dismissed as, and sometimes is.

My life has two modes. One is sitting around writing and contemplating or building things. The other is execution mode. It takes a while to switch from one to the other.

I've always been into computers. When I was getting out of high school and forming my identity musically, all of it was really coming into the fold, computers and drum machines. It felt like, you know, I'm in the right place at the right time. I liked the collision.

When I sit down to make a set list I usually think, 'We'll build it up here, take it down here, go into a quiet section here, explode here,' in a way that there's a flow and it doesn't feel like shuffle on an iPod.

I like the idea of subversively communicating with people... so that you make people see things in different ways.

I think my music's more disturbing than Tupac's - or at least I thought some of the themes of 'The Downward Spiral' were more disturbing on a deeper level - you know, issues about suicide and hating yourself and God and people and everything else.

I'd never want to be Gene Simmons, an old man who puts on makeup to entertain kids, like a clown going to work.

Why don't the Grammys matter? Because it feels rigged and cheap - like a popularity contest that the insiders club has decided.

I think the reason I was 23 before I ever wrote a song was that I was afraid of testing myself. What would I do if I discovered I didn't have anything to say?

I've learned to recognize, a lot of it forced through the process of recovery, that I'm wired wrong in certain ways; the chemical balance of my brain is off in terms of depression a little bit.

It's one thing to sit back and say, 'Hey let's play a club, that will be great,' but then you get there and say, 'Hey wait, this is the dressing room? Where's my dressing room?'

I'm very much aware of the dangers of becoming a cliche. Mr. Anger, someone who gets meaner, angrier on record.

Making noise is easy; making stuff people understand is an easy thing to do.

Any time I sit down and write music, the first part of that is always centering myself and thinking about who I currently am.