Nobody can dare me to do anything that I don’t come up with on my own.

To me, it makes more sense to write different songs and to play different kinds of music and to find your own voice. But no matter what, get out and play for people. Get out...

I write almost all my songs on an acoustic guitar, even if they turn into rock songs, hard rock songs, metal songs, heavy metal songs, really heavy songs… I love writing on an acoustic because...

‘The Blair Witch Project’ is great for motion sickness. The first time you see it, it is extremely creepy. The first time I saw it, I saw it on a bootleg tape on a tour...

There’s nothing wrong with the screaming style of singing, and I’ll be the first to admit that it conveys an emotion. But I’m getting older, and I can’t scream and shout about the same things...

I am the kind of guy who has never taken myself too seriously. I mean, I am very serious about what I do; I’m very serious about the creative process and everything, but at the...

I have very diverse tastes in music, and I don’t, like, make distinctions between what I can’t and can’t listen to. In fact, I could never understand why anybody would do that in the first...

There’s a certain darkness to Slipknot, but at the same time, there’s a very strong dose of positivity. Stone Sour is the same way. There’s a certain melancholy that comes with the slower stuff, but...

With ‘Seven Deadly Sins,’ there was a lot of personal stuff in there that I didn’t even realize I’d been carrying around for awhile. And a lot of guilt involved, a lot of emotion, a...

As much as I love Slipknot, I don’t want that to carry over into what I do for Stone Sour. I want both bands to stand on their own.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a joke – the fact that Madonna is in before Rush and Kiss. Those two bands have influenced so many groups and people other than in metal.

I don’t feel guilty about the music I love. If you feel guilty about something you dig, then you should stop feeling guilty about it. One of my favorite albums to this day is the...

As a writer, as a lyricist, you’re just trying to make sure that you’re not repeating yourself. And that’s a danger for a lot of people. So for me, I just try to keep taking...

I’ve had to really teach myself that when you’re not feeling it, you shouldn’t write anything down because you’re going to end up coming back and re-writing it later. Whereas, if you write when you’re...

I think people are tired of fake music, man. And there’s a lot of it. Technology has reached the point where any boob can walk into a studio and with a little AutoTuning you can...

I’m a Gibson guy. I play anything from Hummingbirds to J200s.

Slipknot is the darkness; Stone Sour is the light. Slipknot is chaos; Stone Sour is structure.

When I write a book… it’s the same essential approach to music as with books. It has to be something I want to hear or read. Hopefully the audience comes along, since that’s the only...

I have ideas every day, and if I’m not carrying a pad of paper, I’m typing it into the notes thing on my iPhone, and it’s just ridiculous – idle hands are the devil’s plaything,...

As iconic a band as Metallica has become, I think sometimes we forget just how raw they were in the beginning of their career, and to a 15-year-old kid like me, it was just shattering....

I grew up poor in crappy situations… various crappy situations. What kept me sane was reading and music. I had so many different literary tastes growing up, be it fiction like Stephen King or Piers...

People such as Hunter S. Thompson and the Beats were a huge influence on me, not just in what they were saying, but how they said it.

The future is meant for those who are willing to let go of the worst parts of the past. When you cannot take two steps without turning around to inspect your footsteps, you are getting...

I’ve always gravitated towards those ultimate lines in songs, the line you grab on to. That line in ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ ‘Here we are now/Entertain us’ – the irony, the antagonism; that’s always stuck...

When I’m working on a Slipknot song, it’s like a switch flips in my head. I can go there easily – it doesn’t take a lot of soul searching – and it’s a dark, almost...

So many people in the world would rather stay in a situation that’s painful but familiar because they’re comfortable with it. Not a lot of people have the strength or heart to realize when something’s...

I do definitely believe that there is life away from this planet. I mean, we’ve kind of established that with the fact that we found bacteria on meteorites, and we’ve kind of used that to...

I have that love for music, when you are finding either old gems that you never heard or newer stuff that perks your ear. It keeps you trying to look for new stuff to write...

I feel like I’ve got a novel in me somewhere, but that’s something… I was just talking to a buddy of mine about it, who’s a writer as well, and he’s nearly done with his...

Music is not a fucking soda. It is not a fucking insurance rate. It is not a fucking T-shirt. It is the only real religion that is worth devoting your soul to. It is the...

There’s times when I’m cleaning the kitchen, and while I’m doing that, I’m singing and air guitaring with a broom to ‘You Should Be Dancing.’

I’m not gonna do the same, tired, standard ‘I was born in a log cabin…’ kind of book. There’s so much more I want to do.

Some of the smartest people I know are metal fans.

I love the fact that people can relate to what I’m saying, even if it’s not for the same subject I was writing about. That is the power of real music and real expression.

I’ve still got the same friends that I grew up with, I still go to the same places that I used to go to when I was younger, and it’s just a very special place...

Playing live is a lost art, and you don’t see a lot of bands that go out and play the way the older bands do. It’s a celebration, and a lot of people treat it...

Live your life, no matter what that life is.

I always tell the fans, ‘Screw it! Like what you like. Listen to what you want.’ Insisting that one type of music is better than the next is snobbery, and I have no time for...

I will always make music with Stone Sour. Stone Sour will always be here.

I got into Dio when I was still quite young. I remember seeing the video for ‘Rainbow In The Dark’ on MTV. That was my first taste of Dio. It wasn’t until years later that...

I was a Marvel kid, and I would have to say that Spiderman is my all-time favorite character. As I got older, my tastes developed a little bit more, and I would follow certain writers;...

The weird thing about metal fans is we’re all so maladjusted in a lot of ways. We’re individualistic and opinionated and severe in our personalities – sometimes we really turn each other off. A little...

There’s such a huge difference between a great arrangement of riffs and a song. Sometimes the two can be the same. But the difference is a song doesn’t necessarily need a riff, whereas a riff...

There is going to come a time when we have to accept who we are without the assistance of religion. That will be the dawn of true faith. We leave the big decisions to invisible...

The biggest difference between me and other artists out there is that they’ll put anything out to sell a record or sell a ticket.

I’m a very lucky guy. I get to write music that I love, and lo and behold, people seem to really like it. I know how fortunate I am.

Mistakes you can learn from; sins stay with you forever.

I’m kind of lucky in the fact that I can take something that’s in my head and write it down, or I can listen to a piece of music that somebody else has written and...

I didn’t have the worst childhood, but I didn’t have the best, and when you grow up like that, you have certain limitations invariably stuck inside you. Slipknot was a way to work it out.

To be honest, and this comes out of left field, but I would love to do something with Jay-Z or Eminem. I have no limitations when it comes to the stuff I want to do...