It's taken a lot for me to understand that the position I'm in is meant to benefit other people.

The Ghost Machine album was actually written when I was going through spiritual depression, as that was written right after Motograter and just prior to Five Finger Death Punch.

I've never played instruments. I've always been a singer or a writer, for that matter. But I started playing in bands when I was sixteen years old.

Myself, I usually wait until I get home to write. While we're touring, I try to stay as focused as possible on the moment at hand because I feel like I'll be robbing the fans if I don't.

I use throat sprays on stage, but most of the throat sprays I was using had alcohol or other carcinogens in them, stuff I wanted to keep away from myself. So I started making a recipe for my own throat spray that was more of a natural approach to everything.

Most of us weren't born with a silver spoon in our mouth, but if life dealt you all the wrong cards, you still have to play.

I've never really been a social butterfly, so to speak.

Playing for the troops is always an honor and seriously humbling.

Our fans understand us because of who we are.

You know, I mean, we're all made to wear these faces, you know, of what we think society would want.

I just try to keep myself positive and really active.

I just got to a point where I was lying to myself constantly, so I had to face up to that. It was a lot of... I don't want to use the words 'self sacrifice,' but that's what it felt like. It was giving up who I thought I was and starting over from scratch and realizing the man that I am was good enough.

For me, I feed off everything, from bad politics to religion to relationships - I mean, just life in general. And, yeah, I'm not necessarily happy with the state of things. And I think that I get to use music as a release.

When I decided to get sober, there were a lot of chemical imbalances that came along with that, physically as well as mentally.

Anyone in recovery knows that isolation is the biggest enemy.

If you dwell on yesterday, man, you're never gonna see tomorrow clearly.

Every wish, every dream, every idea comes to existence only through blood, sweat and sacrifice.

If you put your hand on the piano, you play a note. It's in tune. But if you put it on the violin, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. You have to figure it out.

The thing is that I always consider myself lucky that I can actually cry listening to some music.

Everybody's saying, you know, 'You're so heroic and so on despite of the polio that you had and so on.' Look, I had polio when I was four. So when you're four years old, you know, you get used to things very, very quickly.

The 'Mozart Symphony No. 27' is an early composition. I find it charming.

If you put four different people on a podium conducting the same downbeat, you get four different sounds. It's a little mysterious and fascinating. There's so much you can do with motions and body movements besides giving accurate beats.

I say to string players in small chamber orchestras, 'it's always easy to become a passenger on the journey in sound, just adding volume to the whole. But if you play in an individual way, it makes the difference between good and great sound in an orchestra.'

Whenever I play recitals, the part where I talk about music and my experiences of music, audiences always like it. They feel more involved with an artist who talks to them. It's a nice experience for me as well.