Frank Iero quotes:

The best music happens when you have a personal connection to it. That same philosophy can extend to the instrument you hold in your hands: if a guitar means something special, you're bound to do great things with it.

The relationship between 'My Chemical Romance' and Michael Pedicone is over. He was caught red-handed stealing from the band and confessed to police after our show last night in Auburn, Washington. We are heartbroken and sick to our stomachs over this entire situation.

Publishing the lyric books, poetry or comics of other musicians I know. That's the thing I really want to break into!

Love what you do and who you truly are. Be willing to die for it. If you are true to yourself, you can never go wrong

It's always awkward to pretend to play. I feel like Ashlee Simpson. Oooh, zing.

I love players like Thurston Moore. I mean, you can put notes down on a sheet of paper, and if you practice and get your chops up, you can play like an Eddie Van Halen or a Steve Vai. But nobody can do what Thurston Moore does; he's his own guy. He talks through his instrument in a language that's all his own.

Anytime you put yourself in a creative box, it's going to stifle you; it's not conducive to the writing or recording process.

About six years ago my family was affected by multiple sclerosis.

Every time somebody ever told you that you weren't gonna amount to anything, you know, that's your time to shine, you know? You can show everybody and prove to yourself what you're doing is real and that it counts and that it makes a difference.

When you break it all down, my punk rock is my dad's blues. It's music from the underground, and it's real, and it's written for the downtrodden in uncertain times.

My first show was when I was a high school freshman, but it was at the junior class dance. My older friend and bandmate booked it.

Really I don't know anything other than Jersey. I like the dirtiness of it. Now I'm getting to see the world, and it's great, but it's not better than Jersey.

Emo always meant emotional. Any kind of art or music should be emotional. If its not, than it's pretty much just a jingle selling bleach or pizza.

If you lose count of how many cookies you ate, the calorie intake ceases to exist. True story.

I've always been a fan of vinyl. There's something about the ritual of it. Something about it holds its gravity, for some reason. Sometimes you'll put on music and the music fades into the background. But when you take that vinyl out and put it down, the music becomes the conversation as opposed to being the soundtrack to it.

Everything I've ever dreamed of, everything in my wildest dreams, is coming true.

If you don't listen, you're never gonna learn.

These days, all we hear about is that the industry is in trouble. Everybody is so scared, but our mission statement is having no fear.

My tattoos are like a scrapbook of my life. Sometimes you don't feel comfortable in your own skin, so covering it up with pictures helps

Popsicles should be the new black and then everyone would have one.

I have no want or desire to solo. I'd rather create melodies and accompanying parts.

I also remember the second band I was in ever. We were called Hybrid. We got a show at this local street fair, and we were playing on the back of a flatbed truck. There was an ad in the paper, and it said that 'Hybird' is playing. I was so mad.

We've always wanted to do it, something you could dance to, and deep down we always thought we could bring something to the table if we could do it, but the live shows always made us pull back and be a rock band.

Very rarely I create things and feel like I don't want to recreate them in a live setting. It's a completely different world, but at the same time that's where I've always come from. Enjoying that give-and-take from a live audience, there's a large part of me that's looking forward to it, and creating that relationship again.

My biggest addictions have been chocolate cake, mashed potatoes, and butter sandwiches.

I love players like Thurston Moore. I mean, you can put notes down on a sheet of paper, and if you practice and get your chops up, you can play like an Eddie Van Halen or a Steve Vai. But nobody can do what Thurston Moore does; he's his own guy. He talks through his instrument in a language that's all his own."

I started thinking about how life is a lot like getting pushed out of a plane. You didn't ask to be here, none of us did. But we're all careening through space towards an eventual end that no one's gonna be able to put off. That's the only thing that's definite, this impact. So I started to think about how a lot of us fall at an incredible velocity, and it's over in the blink of an eye.

We're all gonna land, we don't have rocket packs that last forever. But these things that we love, these things that give us purpose, these moments along the way are our parachutes. So I feel very fortunate to have all of these. Art and my family are pretty much my biggest parachutes.

I tend to really like things that are broken, I like the ones that are perfectly imperfect.

No one is born with hate in their heart. Hate is something that has been taught. It is not an innate survival skill that we need; It is a form of stupidity that penetrates our minds and will eventually destroy us.

Sometimes it's a little overwhelming to take on other people's stories, that's just the kind of person I am, maybe I'm empathetic to a fault, I internalize a lot, so it can be a bit hard sometimes, but I understand that that's what they need, and if I can do it, then I'll do it, but if I can't, then I'll try to take a knee.

My name is Frank Iero and I hate mushrooms. All mushrooms. No matter how they're prepared, I feel like they're all slimy and they taste like dirt.

The future's too bright to dwell on the past. Life moves fast, run faster.

If I could've picked a birthday it would've been on Halloween. Yeah, it's always been my favorite holiday. Not because it was my birthday, but actually because, I think it was the freedom, you know? When you were a little kid, you got to go out and be an adult for a couple of hours. You got to, like, just go out with your friends and knock on peoples' doors and be nuts and pull pranks and stuff like that. You could be whoever you wanted to be, you know, I guess that was the appeal to it.

Things don't happen to you, they happen for you.

I feel like the older I get, the more I start to think about life in general. All the clichés that people tell you, the ones that you hear over and over and over again, there's a reason they're cliché, there's a reason you hear them over and over again, because it's all true. As much as you don't wanna hear it, it's true. You'll find out later on, like "Man, they're all right."

I like taking my time and seeing the things around me and appreciating the now.

I would rather be trampled by thousands of children than touch a spider.

People don't always realize that a record is forever. It'll always be there under your name. You've got to be certain that it's right.

Every experience that you have is important.

No one is born with hate in their heart...

When my creative side isn't being fulfilled, I see it affect me in a negative way and I'm not able to become that father/husband/man that I want to be. So it's almost like this dark half that you have to satiate in order to become full, in order to become a good person.

I feel like you have to make art because you have to make it. But the end result of it- that last stage- you have to show it to somebody else to hopefully get a rise or reaction out of them- [to see] if it'll affect someone else.

These are dangerous days we live in and you, the artists, are our last defense.

I feel like with everything you do, everything you make, everything you experience, y'know, even the dumb stuff that you don't even really pay much attention to, like the mundane stuff that happens to you every day, it shapes the person who you are.

I have a split - of my real home-life side that's real-life, and then the creative side that is not necessarily real-life, but it intersects my real-life so much.

I think that's really the beauty of life, like, we're this collection of moments, this collection of experiences that we've had, or little tics that we've stolen from other people, it's like we're this amalgamation of all of that.

Normally you'll have a structure to a song. You'll have an intro to a verse to a pre-chorus to a chorus, kinda repeat that, maybe there's a bridge, then you'll go out on a chorus - that's the quintessential song structure - sometimes you might do a fake-out, re-do a pre-chorus but the chorus doesn't come until later, but for the most part you follow these tried and true structures.

You can only hold on to something for so long and enjoy it just by yourself, what's the point? It's very selfish. For better or for worse, I feel like the point of all of this is to make someone feel something.

I thought for a long time that within art, that you would come up with an idea, you would labor over it intensely until you felt like it was done, and then when you finished it, that was the final stage. I started to realize that that's not actually the completion of it. The final stage of any kind of art is to really lose control over it and let it affect other people. You can't control the effect that it has on people, but you hope that it has some sort of reaction. You just hope that they're not indifferent to it, you wanna make people feel something, whether it's love or hate.

I made songs really for myself - I didn't ever expect to put it out there and make this a record for mass consumption, this was really just a way for me to get out of my own situation and reclaim that part of myself - so when making the songs, I wanted a testament to what I'd gone through, I wanted a snapshot of those moments.

Sometimes art is just about getting a reaction, that's really the end-all be-all.

At times, it could be a bit difficult to understand everything that's being said when just listening, but I wanted the lyrics to be the first impression.

I feel like the personal me and the artistic me are separate, but connected. It's almost like a Jekyll and Hyde thing. As much as you try to keep them apart, they end up together. I'm very much aware that when I'm miserable on the creative side - if I can't make things work a certain way - it really detracts from being the father I want to be. So in order to ultimately be a good father and the man I want to be I know I need to keep my creative side in check, or at least a little bit happy. It's weird how it's intertwined that way.

I don't understand how people can make such a fuss about people that are happy and in love, when there's people dying of hunger and war and they don't even notice that. I really don't understand that. That makes me so angry!

I've been really fortunate where I've made stuff that connects to people on a positive level, and that makes me feel really good, but I can't feel comfortable in dictating what they're supposed to feel out of it, nor am I a professional in something where I can really help people any farther than creating the things that I make to help myself.

It could be anything, give a homeless guy a sandwich, help an old lady across the street like anything to make this world a better place. If everybody just did one good thing for another person like a selfless good deed just think about how much a better place this would be.

Where my heart lies is in the real-life, but at the same time part of it lies in this creative realm where I need to go in and put out that fire, scratch that itch, in order to be all rounded.

This is a dream come true. I have wanted to tour with Green Day since I was 15.

Having kids had a big effect on me, but nothing more than when they started to get older- that really made me realize how fleeting each moment is.

I was feeling miserable physically, in a lot of pain to the point where it was almost crippling me, especially creatively. I decided to take that and use it as an inspiration for getting out of bed and making something again.

Basically, I thought for a very long time that making music and art projects, that that was just something that I did, and real life was separate. And I'm starting to realize that the things that I do, making music and art and photography and all that, it's not just something that I do. It's who I am. So I don't think I'll ever be able to stop. It's like that curse that you live with, this thing that you love but you also hate it at the same time. It brings you a lot of joy but also a lot of heartbreak.

I've always been in bands writing songs with friends in order to play shows or record a future record.

Every time I felt the pain coming on I'd go downstairs and hammer out an idea. After a few months I started to take a look at what I was making, I had for the first time in my life written a large grip of songs completely alone and without any expectations or plans of what they would be for.

I'm a big proponent of letting songs tell me what they wanna sound like.

I made songs really for myself - I didn't ever expect to put it out there.

If I couldn't play, I wouldn't be alive.

Even as a kid- do all kids think about this? I hope they don't, I hope my kids don't think about this- I was always thinking about, "Well, what are we doing? What is this all about?"

I like taking my time and seeing the things around me and appreciating the now. I started to realize that the things that helped me do that were these things that brought me love, brought me joy. And if we're all just falling towards an eventual end, falling towards the ground, then these things are parachutes.

There's lots of bands where somebody will write lyrics and somebody else will sing them. It works for a lot of people, but that feels weird to me. I don't mean this in a bad way at all but it just feels fake.. I guess in my heart of hearts, whether the person has a good voice or not I want [the songs] to come from them. I don't know why.

Festivals are weird, you never know what to expect so it's a bit more nerve wracking then playing your own show.

The messenger is not as important as the message.

People never cease to amaze us.

I've always been a fan of the band setting. I've always been a believer in bands, and I've always been in bands. That's where my comfort zone is. So to stand outside of that, that was never my intention or goal. I never had the dream of, 'I'm gonna go into all these bands as a spring board for my solo work.' But life takes you on different journeys sometimes. I ended up playing a bunch of songs and some of them I really liked.

I think the fun thing about doing a project under your own name is that literally anything could be a follow up, it doesn't necessarily need to be a record, it could be film related, it could be book related, it could be anything.