Quotes By Maynard James Keenan

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

I always knew that I wanted to be an artist.

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.

Everything revolves around the music when it comes to Tool.

Actors have these delicate appendages called Egos.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Most religious stories and mythologies have some sort of similar root, some sort of global archetypes.

Reading is more of a left-brain process, and listening to music is a right-brain function.

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.

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

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.

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.

But I'm a hot-blooded Italian by nature. Whatever the situation you present, I'm going to make something out of it.

After all, in today's music scene every band seems to steal from other bands.

We're just four guys and we are enjoying what we're doing with Tool.