Serj Tankian Quotes

You hear sounds and orchestration, it's ... the fastest way, I think, to your emotions, even if you don't understand the language of the song.

I've definitely read interviews with people where they've explained exactly what they wrote something about and I've been like: "Oh no, I was thinking that was a really beautiful love song or a really sad thing."

Music can inspire immediate emotional reactions, even if the only person who hears it is the person creating it.

I do believe that music has an intense power to connect us together, to inspire us to become ourselves.

Art makes us feel less alone. It makes us think: somebody else has thought this, somebody else has had these feelings.

As a consumer, I don't create art, but I think whatever the message is, art has to touch you.

Egon Schiele is my favorite painter. There's just something about art - photography, painting, music, plays - whatever you see, sometimes there's a gut reaction that's more important or more visceral than what your brain is thinking about. You can't explain that reaction. It's like what happens when you fall in love.

Some of us get a feeling when we hear music and we feel music, and you want to figure out how to continue to feel that.

I think everybody can agree that you can hear a certain song and it will put you in a certain mood, and that's just the beauty of music and I am so inspired by that.

The music is something outside myself that's also inside myself... Music and a sense of another presence always went hand in hand. Even when I was three, I would improvise music, and my maternal grandfather would act as an audience and used to applaud. I would imitate things like thunder and rain.

People tell me all the time that my songs help them express things to loved ones that they may not be able to say themselves.

I also think there's something about dance, music and the arts that transcends all other types of communication and expression.

For the introvert, conversation can be a very limited forum for self expression. When a song moves you, a writer gets you or a theory enlightens you, you and its creator are connecting in a realm beyond sight or speech.

I think I opened up an area with Astral Weeks that hit a lot of peoples' nerves. But you can't really say that they're my favorite songs.

I think music isn't just a genre or sound. If it sounds good and makes you feel good it's a beautiful thing.

I'd rather people interpret the songs and get whatever they can out of them instead of thinking about me crying in a room with a guitar.

No matter what walk of life you're from, you can appreciate the music - songs [can] resonate in your soul and your heart.

The music can tell people everything they need to know about being human beings. It's not my information, it's not mine. I didn't make it. I just discovered it.

If you perform on a stage or you sing a song, it's like you sing your song, and then the words go into the air, and then they go into somebody's body through their ears, so it's kind of like penetrating somebody. It's kind of like having sex with somebody - but, obviously, from a great distance.

I think that selling rights is a bad move commercially, not just morally. It cheapens the songs. When people come to my concerts, they often hold up candles when we do "Let It Be." I don't think they'd do that anymore if the song suddenly became part of an Oldsmobile ad.

I guess I have some kind of a visceral connection with drums. I'm looking to create music that people can react to viscerally, and people will respond to viscerally. I think that you can listen to music, to a song you've never heard before and not really like it, but also feel like you're responding to it physically whether you like it or not. I think that's a powerful aspect about music, and I think that's something that draws me to drums.

Music, to me, is the most beautiful form, and I love film because film is very related to music. It moves by you in its own rhythm. It's not like reading a book or looking at a painting. It gives you its own time frame, like music, so they are very connected for me. But music to me is the biggest inspiration. When I get depressed, or anything, I go "think of all the music I haven't even heard yet!" So, it's the one thing. Imagine the world without music. Man, just hand me a gun, will you?

My favorite Dylan song? I think it's 'Just Like a Woman.' It always makes me cry.

All fiction, if it's successful, is going to appeal to the emotions. Emotion is really what fiction is all about. That's not to say fiction can't be thoughtful, or present some interesting or provocative ideas to make us think. But if you want to present an intellectual argument, nonfiction is a better tool. You can drive a nail with a shoe but a hammer is a better tool for that. But fiction is about emotional resonance, about making us feel things on a primal and visceral level.

I know when I watch certain actors or if I watch Thom Yorke sing on stage, I'm affected by it emotionally. I guess that's what we are all striving for in art but that's such a beautiful thing that happens between two people that may never even meet. So when you do get to meet someone who was affected in that way, it's awesome.