Trent Reznor Quotes
-
I think the thing I've always tried to do is - and I didn't plan it, it just started to come out that way - is try to make challenging music that flirts with accessibility.
-
For me, 'The Social Network' isn't about Facebook. It certainly isn't about how people use it. It's about a flawed character and his pursuit of that grand idea that defines him and validates his life and how far he'll go to get it, and the repercussions that come as a result of that - what he gives up in the process.
-
Jumping through any hoop or taking advantage of any desperate situation that comes up just to sell a product is harmful. It is.
-
I realized that I was afraid to really, really try something, 100%, because I had never reached true failure.
-
One of the biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract. I said, 'Wait - you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it?'
-
I watch people, friends of mine, and see how they portray themselves online and I find interesting that it's kind of a hyper-real version of yourself, how you'd like to be seen, in a way.
-
Balance is good, because one extreme or the other leads to misery, and I've spent a lot of my life at one of those extremes.
-
The band Grizzly Bear, I think they're excellent. There's a beauty and a musicality there that I wish would have been in vogue in the late '80s, when I was forming bands.
-
When Twitter made its way to my radar I looked at it as a curiosity, then started experimenting. I approached that as a place to be less formal and more off-the-cuff, honest and 'human.'
-
My input for the first 16, 17 years of my life was AM radio, FM radio - pretty mainstream stuff. Rolling Stone was probably as edgy as it got.
-
I wanted to escape Small Town U.S.A. To dismiss the boundaries, to explore. My life experience came from watching movies, TV, and reading books and magazines. When your culture comes from watching TV everyday, you're bombarded with images of things that seem cool, places that seem interesting, people who have jobs and careers and opportunities.
-
I think my music's more disturbing than Tupac's - or at least I thought some of the themes of 'The Downward Spiral' were more disturbing on a deeper level - you know, issues about suicide and hating yourself and God and people and everything else.
-
I've watched with a kind of wary eye how gaming has progressed. I was there at the beginning with Pong in the arcade, and a lot of my great childhood memories were around a 'Tempest' machine.
-
In my life, I was always floating around the edge of the dark side and saying what if take it a little bit too far, and who says you have to stop there, and what's behind the next door. Maybe you gain a wisdom from examining those things. But after a while, you get too far down in the quicksand.
-
The idea of politics is just so uninteresting to me - I've never paid much attention to it. I don't believe things can really change. It doesn't matter who's president. Nothing really gets resolved. I don't know. I guess that's not the right attitude to take.
-
This isn't meant to last. This is for right now.
-
I don't even know why I'm saying this in an interview situation, but I always feel like I'm not good enough for some reason. I wish that wasn't the case, but left to my own devices, that voice starts speaking up.
-
I'll name check Radiohead on this--they've done a pretty suave marketing plan on this new record. I think generally it's been a pretty cool thing, but what they've done is used those (sales) numbers in a way that they can spin them anyway they want cause you don't know what they are.
-
I think there's something strangely musical about noise.
-
My music, I hope, takes 100% of your concentration. I know how to do that.
-
You know, if nobody knows who you are, nobody's going to buy your record.
-
I think it's just an awkward time right now to be a musician.
-
My experience with record labels throughout my career has generally fallen into wishing I could do things that they're not built to do, whether it be arguing about having a nicer package - because I do believe some people care about that - to trying to always bank on art-versus-the-easy-commerce route; there's always been headbutting involved.
-
I would love to be looked at some day - and I'm not ever saying I'm at this level - but I'd love to be mentioned in the same breath as a Bowie or an Eno. Those are the people that I admire artistically, their career trajectory, the integrity throughout their career, the bravery of their career.