Mike Shinoda quotes:

My dad remembers being in school with my uncle, and the teacher would say outright to the class that the Japanese were second-class citizens and shouldn't be trusted.

I'd rather get up early and go out and do something than stay up late and screw up my body.

I know at one point I had bright red hair and I had bracelets from my wrist up to my elbow and I was wearing size 50 pants. I wouldn't wear that today, but I'm not embarrassed about wearing it back then any more.

When I was in high school, if my favorite band got too popular, I'd watch carefully.

I spent ten years playing classical piano, and that was what led to keyboards and eventually to production and to Linkin Park.

I really enjoy it -- it's like a videogame on wheels. The GPS touch screen is one of the most entertaining things I've ever seen in a car. I still have a Range Rover that I don't drive much anymore, because I started feeling bad about it.

I was a producer and rapper before Linkin Park. Once the band took off, it was the center of my focus. A couple of years ago, I started missing doing straight-up hip hop, and that's when Fort Minor began.

I grew up painting and playing piano so when I was a little kid I thought I was going to be an artist or a painter but my mom had me taking piano lessons for about 10-12 years as a young kid.

I like sneakers. I guess I could call myself a collector.

When we started the band, it was because we were waiting for a sound that never happened. We got tired of waiting, and we decided to just do it ourselves.

I got over being embarrassed.

I've been really excited about some new cutting edge electronic music and technology.

The thing is, there are so many different ways to make music these days with virtual instruments, software applications, physical instruments, and computer programs.

In high school I was making beats for my friends and for myself and rapping over them.

I remember being a little kid sitting in the living room with my brother and some friends from around the neighborhood, and I would sit at the piano and as they were running around the room doing different things and being silly, acting out, I would actually play the score for it - the music that went along with it.

Usually I spend my holidays with my family.

A decade is a long time to be doing anything, much less to be with the same guys, chasing after the same goals.

My parents still treat Christmas like I'm thirteen years old.

As a creative person you just get an idea in your head, and sometimes you just can't shake it off.

Most of the musicians that I know almost to the man everybody uses Apple computers. They've thought of the steps that you're going to think of when you're trying to create your thing. And that's where the tools get invented to make better art.

You definitely pick stuff up when you go back and listen to older material.

Right now, when it comes to making an album, we really want to give our fans just Linkin Park. We don't want to water it down with anything else or confuse it with anything else. Meteora is just us and that's where our focus has been. So hopefully the fans can enjoy that.

I loved Transformers when I was a kid.

I liked the piano. I always liked playing. I just hated homework.

I'm excited to doing more scoring work in the future.

We learned pretty early on in this band that you can't have snobbery in music.

Who can't relate to the idea of leaving one chapter behind and moving on to the next?

I have a BFA in illustration.

I feel really lucky to be in a band where the guys, for all the opportunities to do things that potentially would be good for them but detrimental to the group, that everybody stayed loyal to the whole.

You can forget me now because I was never welcome.

For me, I feel like, if the right movie comes along, I'd do it again. It's not about the budget. It's about whether it's something that I'm excited to work on.

global warming. every day i leave my house and think, "was it this hot last year?" the heat this summer here in LA and in most of the US has been unbearable. i can't remember another time when it was 105 degrees fahrenheit out here (40.5 celsius), and that's the kind of weather we've been having pretty much every day.

Go find something that you haven't done before. Don't do the same thing over and over again.

I am Opposite of weak Opposite of slack Synonym of heat Synonym of crack Closest to the peak Far from a punk Y'all ought to stop talking And start trying to catch up

I find that the things that really, you know, get us fired up, tend to be things that, for example, things that you talk about tonight, what we see in the news.

I have a toothbrush, my toothbrush is sexy

I usually like to make really dramatic songs that are dynamic from part to part - a lot of jumping from really quiet to really loud.

Id rather get up early and go out and do something than stay up late and screw up my body.

If I weren't making music, I'd be the kid who writes into the magazines and says, "why don't you guys ever cover anything that's different? Hip hop is so much of the same thing over and over again." I love hip hop, so I wanted to make an album from that standpoint, 'cause that's who I am.

I'm going to sprout wings out of my ass one day and fly around the world.

The casual listener won't be around forever.

This is ten percent luck, Twenty percent skill, Fifteen percent power of will, Five percent pleasure, Fifty percent pain, and a hundred percent reason to remember the name

Dream big, work hard and don't be an asshole!