When I say music saved me, I don't say that lightly.

Music gave me a sense that I was worthwhile and that I had something of value to offer the world even though everybody was telling me that I didn't.

I think I've become a much better singer and a much better player. Years and years of playing a couple of hours every day will do that.

I write music all the time. When I talk about having writer's block, it's more to do with lyrics than anything else.

Music is very nebulous, and you can conjure up a lot of moods with music. But lyrics - they're a lot more tangible. They're much more specific. And you want to say something meaningful and creative and artistic and that tells a story and that takes people someplace else.

I've been a fan of old country music, like Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline. I think I'm drawn to it because of the sense of sadness and sort of loss that a lot of good old country music has.

I would love to make my music and be completely anonymous, but that doesn't work. You can't have success and be faceless.

My music and my lyrics are essentially emotional postcards.

This music won't do. There's not enough sarcasm in it.

Please write music like Wagner, only louder.

Life is like music, it must be composed by ear, feeling and instinct, not by rule. Nevertheless one had better know the rules, for they sometimes guide in doubtful cases, though not often.

When I look at music, everything is blurred, and I like it that way. I grew up like that, hanging out with different types of people who listened to so many different types of music. I never wanted to be part of any one clique. I loved it all.

I'm a freak, everything has to be totally flat when I play. Ed Will, my jazz teacher, set up everything completely flat, and then you'd tilt your snare drum away from you, so I do that too. So my snare tilts away from me.

Playing my drums is therapy.

And I was in another band called Flash In The Pan, which was soca, Latin music, down in Laguna Beach.

In 1996, I was in was in an acoustic kind of rock band, we were called Feeble. We were just playing locally.

I want to keep pushing the limits for drummers and expressing myself.

I guess YouTube is the new destination spot for music videos. That's where I go.

We were concerned with having good songs, not just songs that go two hundred miles per hour.

We just wanted to write a bunch of songs that we thought were good songs.

We all write the music, and then Mark and Tom write the lyrics.

My mom listened to the Beatles and Elvis, a lot of different types of music.

I'm super serious about that stuff. I mean, it's rare that I sit down at a drum set when I'm not touring, because we tour so much.

I was told once if I kept breaking things on my legs, that I wasn't going to be able to walk soon, you know? I wanted to be a pro skateboarder, but it was too hard. I was trying, but it wasn't going to happen.