Trent Reznor Quotes

I miss how a record label can help spread the word that you have something out.

When I return to the writing process after being away from it for a while, the first part of it always is being honest with myself: What am I into right now? Is it rock bands and guitars, is it noise, is it dance beats and electronics? Is it space, is it clutter?

To me, rock music was never meant to be safe. I think there needs to be an element of intrigue, mystery, subversiveness. Your parents should hate it.

As long as it feels valid to me and feels sincere, I'll do what I do under the moniker of Nine Inch Nails if it's appropriate. I would hate to think I would ever be in a position where I'm faking it to get a paycheck.

I lived a fairly average, anonymous small-town life till I got the idea to do Nine Inch Nails. Then I locked myself in a studio for a year, and then got off the tour bus two years after that, and I didn't know who I'd turned into.

Being human is a lot more difficult than being on tour.

I spent a long time experimenting, saying, 'Here's a record that's free, or $5 if you want a nice version or $250 if you'd like a really nice coffee-table thing.' Everything felt like the right thing to do at the time and then six months later would feel tired. And I would feel tired. So that's one reason for returning to a major label.

If I could start again, a million miles away, I would keep myself, I would find a way.

This isn't meant to last. This is for right now.

When I was around Bowie, I was nearing the bottom. When we were touring together, I looked at him as a kind of big-brother figure and I also looked at him as somebody I had a lot of respect for. The age and the period he's at in his life, I'd like to be there some day. He has a kind of content peace about him that's something to shoot for.

Frankly, I have always dreaded writing - there always seemed to be pain involved, unpleasant self-examination and a lot of fear.

I was at my most miserable when I had everything I ever wanted.

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 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.

I do actually believe in love. I can't say that I'm 100 percent successful in that department, but I think it's one of the few worthwhile human experiences. It's cooler than anything I can think of right now.

My advice today, to established acts and new-coming acts, is the same advice I'd give to myself: pause for a minute, and really think about 'What is your goal? Where do you see yourself?'

I'm just trying to figure out the right balance between making fans feel good and also maintaining some dignity for myself in the process.

I think if there was an ISP tax of some sort, we can say to the consumer, 'All music is now available and able to be downloaded and put in your car and put in your iPod and put up your a
if you want and it's $5 on your cable bill.'

I have been wildly enthused about gaming since I was younger, and a career path I chose not to go down but did really consider was getting into programming and game design.

I become irritated when I am being written off as aloof or stand-offish when I'm shy and don't know what to say.

Being in a band with my wife, I'm very aware of the multitude of ways that can go wrong. We're best friends and are interested in the same things, so it's natural to make music together.

Sometimes the worst thing that can happen is, 'Oh, I'm on stage playing a song,' because you're daydreaming about something else, you're on autopilot. You have to fight that.

The least responsive audience I can ever remember playing to.

I've attended many concerts where I felt let down and I was wishing it would be something else. Not that it's their duty to please me, but at the same time, I think a lot about what it's like through the eyes of the consumer, the fan. I want not to pander to the audience, but to be aware of them.

What I have appreciated about the 'Call of Duty' games is the scale of production. It's not an indie game. It's not trying to be an indie game. But I've genuinely been pretty consistently blown away by, wow, what an effort has gone into this.

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.

There's nothing like a stressful day.

God is DEAD, and no one cares! If there is a hell I'll see you there!

My life has been many examples of shortsighted goals that I thought would fix things. You know, if there's something broken inside me, if there's a hole in there, I thought: If I could just write a good song someday, then I'd be OK. You know, if I could just be on stage in front of people I'd never seen before and be validated by them.

It's a humbling thing, having kids. One of my sons came to rehearsals, and now he says Daddy's job is 'go play loud music.'

One of my biggest heroes and people I was fortunate enough to be around is David Bowie. I look at his career, and he always had the balls to break things that weren't broken, to step away from something and try something new, at risk of failing.

When I look at people that I would like to feel have been a mentor or an inspiring kind of archetype of what I'd love to see my career eventually be mentioned as a footnote for in the same paragraph, it would be, like, Bowie.

To switch right into creativity usually takes a bit of time, and this came up right at that juncture where I thought, okay, here's an opportunity to work with somebody I really respect in a new medium.

I like the idea of subversively communicating with people ... so that you make people see things in different ways.

Musicians have always adopted Macs.

Schoolwork came easy to me. I learned to play piano effortlessly. I was coasting.

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.

It's not like I ride a broom into interviews. I don't hang upside down with a cape on.

I've become impossible, holding on to when everything seemed to matter more.

I believe there's a God but I'm not too sure of his relevance.

I hated school ... I freaking hated it. The fact is that it revolved around something you didn't have access to. If you weren't on the football team, if you were in the band, you were a leper. When people say those were the best years of our lives, I want to scream.

People want to listen to a lot of music and do whatever they want with it. They don't want DRM, they don't want subscriptions. They don't want a player that only can do this but can't do that and you only have one copy. They don't want that. You know? I don't want that.

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.

The reality is that people think it's okay to steal music.

Making noise is easy; making stuff people understand is an easy thing to do.

Nine Inch Nails is like building an army to go conquer. We build it, then we play, and we have to play so much to validate building it, financially. It leads to getting burn-out because a tour that would be fun if it lasted three weeks has to last 15 weeks.

You're standing onstage in a sold-out arena with people singing your music, and you feel like the loneliest person in the world. Because here's a party that, essentially, it's for you. And you still somehow feel like you don't belong there. Those people all have their lives and go back home.

I thought I'd reached the bottom a few times, but then I'd realise there was another 30 floors of despair below that.

I was up above it. Now, I'm down in it.

Grammy asshole weekend in LA. Yuck ... The Grammys = the old guard / old media propping up their puppets trying to convince the outside world (and each other) they're relevant.

I think, fundamentally, music is something inherently people love and need and relate to, and a lot of what's out right now feels like McDonalds. It's quick-fix. You kind of have a stomachache afterwards.

Perfect little dream, The kind that hurts the most.

The Grammys make me hate music, and certainly everyone in the ass-licking music industry.

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.

When I sit down to make a set list I usually think, 'We'll build it up here, take it down here, go into a quiet section here, explode here,' in a way that there's a flow and it doesn't feel like shuffle on an iPod.

I write most of my songs when I'm in a bad mood.

People are always saying, 'You're really nice, I thought you were going to be a complete asshole.' I'm getting pretty fed up with it. I just want to say to them, 'Well I could always piss on your head.'

Though I still have no semblance of a life outside of Nine Inch Nails at the moment, I realize my goals have gone from getting a record deal or selling another record to being a better person, more well-rounded, having friends, having a relationship with somebody.

I'm a lot less precious than I used to be about putting things out, for better or for worse. The result of a public that has a very high consumption rate and turnover rate is people listen to more music but spend less time with individual bits of music.

Apparently, the image of our president is as offensive to MTV as it is to me.

You can punch a wall or write a song. Just as painful either way, but you have something to show for it at the end of the day with a song.

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.

In Nine Inch Nails, I've been the guy calling the shots since inception. I'd gotten used to that.

I believe sometimes you have a choice in what inspiration you choose to follow and other times you really don't.

Bow down before the one you serve, you're going to get what you deserve.

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 realized that I was afraid to really, really try something, 100%, because I had never reached true failure.

The 'Downward Spiral' album was a record all about beating everybody up - and then 'Hurt' was like a coda saying maybe I shouldn't have done that. But to make the song sound impenetrable because I thought it was a little too vulnerable, I tried to layer it in noise.

Just how deep do you believe? Can you get up off your knees?

The fact that someone can relate to something you, in an intimate moment, jotted down, just blew me away.

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 it's just an awkward time right now to be a musician.

Being a rock & roll star has become as legitimate a career option as being an astronaut or a policeman or a fireman.

I love David Fincher and I think he's a genius.

What I was concerned about when I wrote the 'Downward Spiral' record was being a self-centred destructive force. The point was tearing down everything in a search for something else.

Today's political climate does not allow the luxury of apathy.

The dynamic of a relationship changes when one person gets sober.

Self-examination with a close-up mirror in an antiseptic environment is what Nine Inch Nails is based on.

Sometimes I think I spend my whole life trying to figure out where I fit in.

Now that I have a thousand albums in my car all the time, I listen to more music. I was too lazy; I always had the same five discs in there. I'd never think to change it.

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'm very much aware of the dangers of becoming a cliche. Mr. Anger, someone who gets meaner, angrier on record.

My music, I hope, takes 100% of your concentration. I know how to do that.

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.

Fear has governed my life, if I think about it.

Nine Inch Nails was born out of Cleveland, Ohio, with me and a friend in a studio working on demos at night. Got a record deal with a small, little label, went on tour in a van, and a couple years later found that somehow we touched a nerve, and that first record resonated with a bunch of people.

Why don't the Grammys matter? Because it feels rigged and cheap - like a popularity contest that the insiders club has decided.

I'd much rather be worrying about playing that note in tune, and picking out the best way to arrange the song, rather than thinking about pricing for the download. It's not art.

With a Nine Inch Nails show, I'm building on a legacy that comes with a certain set of expectations. I have to push that forward, I have to reinvent myself, I have to feel current and valid.

When your culture comes from watching TV every day, you're bombarded with images of things that seem cool, places that seem interesting, people who have jobs and careers and opportunities. None of that happened where I was. You're almost taught to realize it's not for you.

I didn't want to be in a Pepsi commercial with R2-D2 sitting on my shoulder.

Anyone who's an executive at a record label does not understand what the Internet is, how it works, how people use it, how fans and consumers interact - no idea. I'm surprised they know how to use e-mail.

Spotify - I met those guys before they launched in America and was wildly excited about the idea. 'Wow, this is all the music in the world, for a flat fee.'

The first set of lyrics for the first songs I ever wrote, which are the ones on 'Pretty Hate Machine,' came from private journal entries that I realized I was writing in lyric form.

It probably wasn't until Nine Inch Nails played the first Lollapalooza that I actually went to a festival.

I'd rather not get into what I'm talking about lyrically. I think it's impossible not to demystify a song when saying what it's about. Music and art can be damaged severely by too much information; I say that as somebody that has participated in that.

Books are better than movies because you design the set the way you want it to look.

When I was 25, people used to say to me that having kids would change you, and I'd roll my eyes.

'Downward Spiral' felt like I had an unending bottomless pit of rage and self-loathing inside me and I had to somehow challenge something or I'd explode. I thought I could get through by putting everything into my music, standing in front of an audience and screaming emotions at them from my guts.

What is exciting is taking back the excitement of being able to debut something to an audience in exactly the way you want to.