Maynard J. Keenan Quotes

"And if you don't live, you have nothing to write about."

"I just hope that our fans are people who are inspired by music, and just use our music as a background or inspiration for whatever it is they do."

"I think people in general have neglected to learn about history."

"Just in general, any government throughout history hasn't really wanted its people to be educated, because then they couldn't control them as easily."

"We're five people, five individuals who came together to create something, to make music and to complete each other musically, to form a perfect circle."

"A lot of names in America and Europe have their roots in Latin and Greek words. A lot of them go back to archetypes and their stories."

"Because artists can be extremely eccentric and insane, and unfortunately, the people they hurt the most are the people that are closest to them."

"But then it hasn't really been a focus of our government to make us an educated people."

"For me, life is writing and I can do it anywhere. It doesn't matter where I am. I listen. I write. I live."

"I believe that music is a force in itself. It is there and it needs an outlet, a medium. In a way, we are just the medium."

"I think the biggest problem working with me would be that I'm an only child, and so I have an internal dialogue that goes on that I just assume you can hear."

"If the education of our kids comes from radio, television, newspapers - if that's where they get most of their knowledge from, and not from the schools, then the powers that be are definitely in charge, because they own all those outlets."

"If you take different mythologies from different cultures, the names may change and the story lines may vary but there is always something in common."

"There were a lot of choices to make and I always picked artist. I never once picked doctor, lawyer, firemen or something like that. It was always artist."

"Because as an only child, you have your own little world."

"I see a lot of patterns in our behavior as a nation that parallel a lot of other historical processes."

"Everything we release with Tool is inspired by our music."

"I think everything Joni Mitchell did for music was big."

"I think the media made Manson, turned him into some larger than life figure and surrounded him with mystery and some shady glamour."

"I would hope they would be our fellow artists, rather than trying to emulate or idolize clowns like us."