A circle is the reflection of eternity. It has no beginning and it has no end - and if you put several circles over each other, then you get a spiral.
Maynard James Keenan
People have to follow their hearts, and if their hearts lead them to Wal-Mart, so be it.
I'm a pessimist. But I'm a pessimist with a sense of responsibility.
I can't be a legend yet. I'm not dead.
Once you take yourself too seriously the art will suffer.
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.
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.
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.
Because as an only child, you have your own little world.
I think everything Joni Mitchell did for music was big.
A lot of people into Tool, for some reason, are not interested in humor.
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.
Music is about listening, the more you play, the more the magic spreads.
Because artists can be extremely eccentric and insane, and unfortunately, the people they hurt the most are the people that are closest to them.
The record company's worst fear is that you'll fall in love or get rich.
And if you don't live, you have nothing to write about.
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.
There is still a future with music, because people want music.
Shows are really strange. Sometimes you really don't know what to expect.
But you know, I'm the negative-Nancy, curmudgeon, glass-half-empty-with-a-leak-in-it guy - which is basically the fuel that fires me up anyway. Without that, we wouldn't have me.
We're just four guys and we are enjoying what we're doing with Tool.
Nowadays, you have to sell, like, half a million or a million records just to break even.
But I'm a hot-blooded Italian by nature. Whatever the situation you present, I'm going to make something out of it.
I always knew that I wanted to be creative, that I wanted to create something.
Everything revolves around the music when it comes to Tool.
The idea is, if I can't heal from my art, then how can you heal?
I think people in general have neglected to learn about history.
Actually I never did stand up. I'm not that funny.
But then it hasn't really been a focus of our government to make us an educated people.
I see a lot of patterns in our behavior as a nation that parallel a lot of other historical processes.
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.
Prescott National Forest is right on the edge of my home in Arizona.
One of the challenges we set up for 'Puscifer' was to come up with a core identity and see how far we can push it.
I think the media made Manson, turned him into some larger than life figure and surrounded him with mystery and some shady glamour.
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.
After all, in today's music scene every band seems to steal from other bands.
Everything we release with Tool is inspired by our music.
I'm a lot easier to work with now than I have been in the past, for sure.
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.
You know, I grew up listening to Joni Mitchell.
Actors have these delicate appendages called Egos.
I would hope they would be our fellow artists, rather than trying to emulate or idolize clowns like us.
Most religious stories and mythologies have some sort of similar root, some sort of global archetypes.
I've always had an affinity for growing things.
Adam does most of the work when it comes to videos and he basically does the same as I do with the lyrics. The videos are his visual interpretations of our music.
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 always knew that I wanted to be an artist.
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.
Reading is more of a left-brain process, and listening to music is a right-brain function.
Yeah, because I think it's more important just to inspire people to wake up one day and pick up a book and start feeling it out for themselves.
