Quotes By Maynard James Keenan

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.

Once you take yourself too seriously the art will suffer.

Actually I never did stand up. I'm not that funny.

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.

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

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

There is still a future with music, because people want music.

Prescott National Forest is right on the edge of my home in Arizona.

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.

The idea is, if I can't heal from my art, then how can you heal?

I always knew that I wanted to be creative, that I wanted to create something.

I'm a lot easier to work with now than I have been in the past, for sure.

I'm a pessimist. But I'm a pessimist with a sense of responsibility.

Music is about listening, the more you play, the more the magic spreads.

I've always had an affinity for growing things.

I think everything Joni Mitchell did for music was big.

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

The record company's worst fear is that you'll fall in love or get rich.

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

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.

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.

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.

A lot of people into Tool, for some reason, are not interested in humor.

I can't be a legend yet. I'm not dead.

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.

I always knew that I wanted to be an artist.

Actors have these delicate appendages called Egos.

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.

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.

Everything revolves around the music when it comes to Tool.