Rivers Cuomo quotes:

I found that so many people in the music business started out as metalheads in the Eighties - whether they're songwriters, producers, engineers or executives, and no matter what they look like, with short hair, suits or whatever. I feel like my generation of metal kids really tends to populate the music world to a large extent.

The most nerve-wracking experience is an oral presentation in class. And right under that would be doing 'Saturday Night Live' or 'David Letterman.' One of those shows.

At 18, I moved to L.A. with my heavy metal band Avant Garde, which was very much influenced by Metallica. At 19, I got a job at Tower Records, and everything started to change very quickly. I started listening to the Velvet Underground, Pixies, early Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and also earlier music like the Beatles.

I think audiences sometimes mistakenly assume a quality performance comes from some great emotional disturbance rather than really intense concentration. Concentration and flow is what it's all about.

Miley Cyrus' 'Party in the USA' kills me with jealousy. The melodies are out-of-control beautiful.

I'm just living each day, and I'm better equipped to do so. I mean, I used to be totally afraid, I used to have, like, permanent stage fright. But now I'm trying to have fun. I'm trying to bring as much happiness to as many people as possible.

I have a natural instinct to feel guilty and that I've let people down. I've apologized in more songs than 'Back to the Shack.' Going back to our second record, the closing lines are 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.' It's definitely part of my personality.

Being in Weezer's just gotten so much more fun over the years. I love almost every part of my job. My very favorite part is working on new songs.

I'm constantly fighting with my manager to reduce the amount of time I have to spend on promotional activities, so I can get back in the studio and work on new music.

With each step I take, I see that my ability to perform gets a little better. So until it starts getting worse, I'm going to keep moving forward.

When 'Nevermind' came out, my roommate had the CD. At first, I actually thought, 'This is too polished and commercial.' It was a little off-putting. But then I was like, 'This is the best music ever.' It felt so close to what I wanted to do.

In some ways, I feel like I was Nirvana's biggest fan in the Nineties. I'm sure there are a zillion people who would make that claim, but I was just so passionately in love with the music that it made me feel sick. It made my heart hurt.

Most people don't really need to hear a six-minute guitar solo that modulates between five keys and time signatures. What they want is a good song.

I love writing songs. One of the toughest things is structure; it just works when you use verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge. And as soon as you become aware of that formula, you start to have a bad conscience when you write with that particular structure.

It's great - that's the best part about being famous is that people want to get to know me. People come up to me and introduce themselves, and I make friends, and then I meet their friends. It seems like I have a very happy and comfortable social life, which is something I never had when I was younger.

I've tried every which way for writing lyrics - everything from using really bizarre imagery and metaphors, sort of obscuring the facts of what I'm singing about, all the way over to a song like 'Losing My Mind,' where you're just reading my thoughts as they're occurring.

I listen to music a lot on the treadmill - I would test 'Raditude' songs out on the treadmill.

Even at your best, the creative moments are still kind of fleeting.

I think if I wasn't a musician, I would be a high-school band director or orchestra director. I like working with large groups of musicians and bringing out the dynamics and accomplishing something as a team.

It's so important to me that I feel like I'm doing something that's never been done before, whether that's in the show, or I'm writing a song. I can exist in this little box here, but I have to do something new with it.

I felt frustrated by the limitations of rock and the lifestyle of touring around on a bus and playing the same songs over and over. So I went back to school to study music, and one of the things I got into was the Italian opera composer Puccini.

Most of the songs I write are just very directly from my life. I don't have a big imagination. Whenever I tried to write from fantasy, it comes out sounding really fake.

I meditate an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. Once a year I go away for a long retreat. And overall, I just feel more comfortable in my own skin and less anxious, less sad, less fearful.

With no faith, purely as a scientific experiment, I started meditating and watched if it changed my music. It did, but it didn't make it more mellow. It made it easier to get into the flow of creativity.

I'm often troubled by a very strong instinct to share everything that's going on with me. I want to feel that connection, even with people I don't know. Then this other voice says, 'That's not prudent. People will use what you've said to hurt you.'

I don't ever want anyone to think that I'm being judgmental. I gotta do everything I can do to not be preachy.

It seems like Weezer has gotten better and better at getting attention for everything besides our music. Part of that is just the nature of our culture now - you really have to scream to get some attention, so people even know you have a record out that they might want to listen to.

The truth is, I hate to perform. I get such bad stage fright, it makes me physically ill.

I think I've been skeptical of violent passion for a long time. I think 'Pinkerton' is about that a lot - seeing how, every time I've felt really passionate for someone, as soon as I 'acquire' them or feel like I've acquired them, the passion goes away.

I always like balance. If I'm playing rock music all the time, chances are I'll start craving some lighter, poppier stuff, both to listen to and to play. I compare music to massage. If someone's been working on your back for a long time, you really want them to move down to your legs or something.

When I was 15 and dreaming about being a rock star... I thought the whole point of it was to get chicks.

What I am best at is reading a book and then writing a critical essay.

Cat Stevens' music, voice, and energy made me feel so secure. He sounded different from some of the paternal figures in my life, so gentle and kind.

I like to get input from all different kinds of listeners, including the really conservative ones, and sometimes those listeners steer me in a direction that I haven't seen. But at the end of the day, my vote is always to go in the direction that makes me the most excited.

Growing up, I was a giant KISS fan, and the truth is the record I had was 'Rock and Roll Over,' and there wasn't even a clear picture of them in the packaging! So I really had no idea what they looked like; I just loved their music.

Meditation hasn't separated me from my life and my friends and my work. It's just made my fear go away, so I can just be that much more engaged.

I guess I'm just a born performer or artist or sharer. I find the intimate details of my life compelling and interesting. I guess that I'm assuming that everyone else does, too.

When you're starting out, you basically have all these assumptions about what it means to be an artist or how to be a rock star. It took me years, through trial and error, to figure out what does work for me. So much of it is counter to the myth of the rock-star life.

I meditate two hours a day, and every year I do one big long meditation course. I love it, and I'm really into it.

I always loved the 'L.A. Weekly.' I totally looked up to it when Weezer was starting out, and I always wanted to be in it, and they always totally ignored us!

I can't imagine Weezer stopping. We just love doing what we're doing, and I think we'll keep going until we fall down dead. Even if the audience is abandoning us, I can't imagine doing anything else!

I have some good books of Bach keyboard music transcribed for guitar, and there's always a nylon-string guitar hanging on the wall in my house and a bunch of classical guitar books to grab. I kind of do that just for fun.

I have no interest in emo. I'm all about rap metal.

I just gotta keep reminding myself: Every time I do an interview or something, my volition really has to be just to serve, to help people. Not to feel like I'm important.

I think probably with any performer, but maybe with rock music especially, the audience wants to see the singer being real, and exploring, and not doing a rehearsed routine, so I'm just constantly looking for new things to try. I'm really curious out there, and my curiosity has led me into all kinds of bizarre situations.

I decided to try celibacy because I heard it would help the meditation, and I tried meditation because I heard it would help with the music. So, it all really comes back to the music.

I signed up for eHarmony once, and it took three hours to fill out that online form - so many personal questions. Then I clicked on submit, and instantaneously they responded and said, 'We are sorry, but there is no one any where in the world that is appropriate for you.' So that was it - I gave up.

Certainly, the Beach Boys and the early Beatles records were a huge influence on me lyrically.

New country music comprises about five percent of what I hear per year. I enjoy it, but I don't really take note of who's singing it or writing it.

I just went to the hobby shop and got an electricity kit and a chemistry kit, and I'm really excited to do experiments like squeezing an egg into a bottle and growing crystals. I'm really getting into hobbies.

I think I'm a good dad. It's hard. Ultimately, it's our kids that have the final word. So we'll have to ask them.

I was fixated on Prince's 'Black Album' for a long time.

I had rock-star dreams from 8 or 9 almost nonstop. I thought it was going to be like being a god on earth: having as many women as you want whenever you want them, having super powers, being incredibly wealthy, never doing laundry.

The bonds you make with those records when you're 14, 15 and 16, they'll never be broken, and nothing will ever be as strong as that.

Easy' is not a word I would ever use to describe touring.

I wouldn't say that I relax and enjoy anything. But I think my pessimism helps. I never really expect anything good to happen, so when it does, it's a nice surprise.

I do want to make music that people love, but I also want to make music that I love. I know I can't please everyone with anything I do, so I don't think too much about how other people are going to take things.

I enjoy listening to the albums of my youth as much as ever.

I find that I end up liking songs if I really have an idea of something I wat to write about-some problem in my life or something I want to work through; if I don't have something like that at the root of the song, then I think I end up not caring about it as much. I gravitate towards some kind of concept or idea or situation that I want to write about. Very often I have to write, rewrite and come at it from an opposite angle...and I end up writing the opposite song that I thought I was going to write.

I never feel guilty about liking music.

I think there is a very subtle shift from the metal I grew up on to Weezer. I think the big shift was from a minor key to a major key. That made a huge difference in how it was perceived.

If enough people out there want a physical product, I'll be happy to make one. I'd say about 10,000 people is "enough."

It could appear that I'm some kind of natural genius, but it's just a million small lessons I've picked up over the years.

It is cool to have a label head that is also a songwriter, in a band, and produces records.

Most of the songs I write just very directly from my life. I don't have a big imagination. Whenever I tried to write from fantasy, it comes out sounding really fake.

The internet has not granted us more control in relation to the record company because we're still bound by an agreement with them not to release our music without their consent. But they generally let us do what we want, anyway, so it doesn't matter who's officially in control.

The reason I started with prostitutes was solely to work on my negotiating skills. Once I mastered negotiating with naked women, dealing with Interscope was a piece of cake.