Trent Reznor Quotes

Mike Patton is a genius... It is definitely the hardest music I've ever played.

I'm just trying to avoid any sort of generic kind of music - I don't want to do generic jazz or fusion.

I have no interest in making music that's built for an antique shop.

It would have been the equivalent of Jackson Pollock's attempts to copy the Sistine Chapel.

The only sort of descriptive adjective or catch phrase for my music would be 'eclectic.'

I always believed that my work should be unfinished in the sense that I encourage people to add their creativity to it, either conceptually or physically. Back in the 1960s, I was calling for 'Unfinished Music,' number one, and number two, with my artwork - I was taking unfinished work into the gallery. And that's how I was looking at it.

I come from an art-school background, and I still feel that in my music, it's about exploration and challenging myself, about putting myself in a place that's frightening because I haven't been there before.

I had a teacher in art school who said something about the only works he really enjoyed seeing or found much in were works where he had a sense that a discovery was made in the course of making this object. I like to hold to that as my marching orders.

The task of the artist at any time is uncompromisingly simple to discover what has not yet been done, and to do it.

My intentions have been, and are always, to just really get behind what my ideas are musically and to just ride this thing out, cause it feels good, and I think for the most part it's good music. Even when it's not, I'd like to still search for something that could be even like a little bit mind-blowing or shocking to me.

I'm very eclectic in my music tastes - anything from Nina Simone to Beethoven to Talvin Singh.

I never had many problems to do my music and to give it to a record company. Rarely do they try to argue with me about my music, probably because it's still too far-out.

King Crimson is never easy; it's challenging. That's why I like it.

Elliott Carter does not write the kind of music that the kids go off to school whistling.

To keep creating something with this type of music, you have to take it out of the box.

I love Slipknot. But then I like Jao Gilberto... It's the spirit that comes through in music.

People like Aphex Twin, Jason Pierce, Jarvis Cocker and William Orbit are actively showing their interest in a wider field of music. Jarvis and I met on a benefit for an extraordinary man called LaMonte Young, the father of minimalism, who worked with John Cale and shared a loft with Yoko Ono.

You never know when contemporary art is going to insinuate itself into a normally art-free zone.

More people are listening to opera, and I'm happy - everybody must be given that opportunity.

People like Jeff Buckley, the Mars Volta and Bjork made me listen to music differently. You learn the voice is an instrument you can do crazy things with.

A painting that doesn't shock isn't worth painting.

Post-minimalism implies music that's genre-less. Minimalism was very important because it came at a time when contemporary music had become so complex, so experimental and detached that people turned away from it. Minimalism broke that trend and brought music back to the people.

I was an absolute idiot, wearing polo-necks, reading Kerouac, watching Woody Allen movies, and jazz fitted right into all of that. My interest in that whole world became very genuine, but perhaps started off a bit affected - a mixture of right and wrong reasons. I was always drawn to non-commercial music, perhaps pathologically so.

Mars is really different, into art. Lydia Lunch is more energy. James Chance is more commercial in a different way, in funk and jazz. They were all doing original things, trying to create their own sound and music. I think they're all great.

I really started writing music to challenge myself, to see what I could write.