Quotes By Maynard James Keenan

Once you take yourself too seriously the art will suffer.

People have to follow their hearts, and if their hearts lead them to Wal-Mart, so be it.

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

We are eternal. All this pain is an illusion.

Life is too short not to create something with every breath we draw.

Recognize this as a holy gift and celebrate this chance to be alive and breathing.

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.

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

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

Choices always were a problem for you. What you need is someone strong to guide you. Deaf and blind and dumb and born to follow, what you need is someone strong to use you - like me.

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

I think there's a reason why wine figures into so many religions. There's something transcendent about it. It's sort of the way that music is more than the sum of its parts. You have all these elements that make up the terroir that wine can communicate.

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 Grammys are nothing more than some gigantic promotional machine for the music industry. They cater to a low intellect and they feed the masses. They don't honor the arts or the artist for what he created. It's the music business celebrating itself.

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

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.

All I can do is say I smell a rat. I don't know where it is or what kind of rat it is, but as an artist, I can express how. But I couldn't responsibly stand up and tell people which way to go, because then I'm just as guilty as the people who are telling everybody else what to do and where to go.

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 think everything Joni Mitchell did for music was big.

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.