Rivers Cuomo Quotes

I still love the music and it's still plays a part in what I do but I never 'turned my back' on garage. I was always doing R&B with, say, Walking Away. It's wonderful that I was classed as the king of 2-step and a pioneer, but it's had its turn, I think.

As I said, when we needed to move over to rock'n'roll, Sam and Vernon couldn't quite make the shift. So that's when Larry took over on drums, and we needed a bass player.

I started out in rock, but I didn't want to stay there, and haven't.

I always liked major-key music quite a bit, and that might have something to do with so many of the musical experiences of my childhood being based around the piano. On piano, it is very easy to move between major and minor and to really see how it looks and to feel how it sounds.

I think the right way to do this is just to step up and do it, so I actually think we'll see more of that over the next coming weeks, because I think they'll say, "We'd like to be good for business and quiet on politics, but this is too urgent, it is too much of a key crisis in who we are going to become as Americans. We can risk too much, and so we have to step forward." And I think you will see more and more people stepping forward, like Howard Schultz, Steve Case and other folks, in order to try to make a difference in this [Donald Trump] election.

I think I was annoyed going through the '90s just as a guy who loves music. There wasn't a lot of music for me. Everything was groove driven. We lost the plot with the melody. There's no more melody.

We came out right in the middle of the hard-rock period... it was hard-rock everywhere! But we were ready to make our music, you know?And it was such a turn around, I guess it caught people by surprise.

I liked rock music, I kind of moved into that sphere, somehow thinking that somewhere along the line I'd be able to put the two together. And I suppose I very nearly did with the Ziggy character.

[Country Music] is the final destination for many punk rockers [...] Rockabilly is the mid-point and then [they] end up at Country [...] There's purity to that music and I think that appeals to a lot of punk rock people - the precision, the purity, and the directness of Country Music.

In music I still prefer the minor key, and in printing I like the light coming from the dark. I like pictures that surmount the darkness, and many of my photographs are that way. It is the way I see photographically. For practical reasons, I think it looks better in print too.

I think it's a misconception that metal's about anger, obviously.

I don't think that the punk sound really became the punk sound until much later. The punk era wasn't really just one musical sound. There are a lot of differences among Television, the Ramones, and the Talking Heads.

I do not think that I am ever overconfident. I am merely wholly confident, and I maintain that there is all the difference in the world there.

The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while the statesman think about the next generation

If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. [...] The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.

I don't think there's any essential difference, at least for me, between writing poetry and writing prose.

It's so interesting to me how songs take on a shape and body of their own and grow.

Some people are good at performing in front of people like that, but I'm uncomfortable at it. I think maybe that's the difference between acting and being a performer. I don't think I'm a natural performer.

The difference between you and me is that you think to live and I live to think.

Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.

I still do mostly listen to CDs. I think that every format really is a different way of listening. If you take a different sort of psychological stance to it - like, I think the transition from vinyl to CD definitely marked a difference in the way people treated music. The vinyl commands a certain kind of reverence because it's a big object and quite fragile so you handle it rather carefully, and it's expensive so you pay attention to how it's looked after.

The difference between a good picture and a mediocre picture is a question of millimeters - small, small differences - but it’s essential. I didn’t think there is such a big difference between photographers. Very little difference. But it is that little difference that counts, maybe

There’s a difference between thinking you deserve to be happy and knowing that you are worthy of being happy. Your being alive makes worthiness your birthright. You alone are enough.

Modest. When they meet me, they think I'm going to be outgoing, but I like things low-key. I don't like people to think I'm bragging.

I think I've tried to stay true to my music since the beginning. It's kind of hard because of the access and technology but I just do what I do.