Top 99 Maynard James Keenan Quotes
#4. ...music, if it really resonates, will beat somewhere right near your heartbeat. That music will make sense to you...because it's in rhythm with your soul.
Maynard James Keenan
#5. 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.
Maynard James Keenan
#6. 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.
Maynard James Keenan
#9. It's in my blood. My great-grandfather made wine and it's a tradition I want to pass on to my son.
Maynard James Keenan
#12. 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.
Maynard James Keenan
#14. Threw you the obvious and you flew with it on your back,
A name in your recollection, down among a million same. - A Perfect Circle.
Maynard James Keenan
#15. Put a small child in a playpen with an apple and a bunny. If s/he eats the apple and plays with the bunny, s/he's normal;but if s/he eats the bunny and plays with the apple, I'll buy you a new car. Somewhere along the line we must have been TAUGHT to do the wrong thing.
Maynard James Keenan
#16. Seems like Ive been here before.
Seems so familiar.
Seems like Im slipping
into a dream within a dream.
Maynard James Keenan
#17. 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.
Maynard James Keenan
#18. Reading is more of a left-brain process, and listening to music is a right-brain function.
Maynard James Keenan
#19. You really should be able to feel the higher power of music and be moved by it, rather than listening to me waffle on and having to explain it.
Maynard James Keenan
#21. This sort of behavior is left to the psychotic, dogmatic, fundamentalist believers you see on your TV everyday letting off bombs and killing people in the name of God. Beliefs are dangerous. Beliefs allow the mind to stop functioning. A non-functioning mind is clinically dead. Believe in nothing.
Maynard James Keenan
#22. Today's woman puts on wigs, fake eyelashes, false nails, sixteen pounds of make-up/shadows/blushes/creams, living bras, various pads that would make a linebacker envious, has implants and assorted other surgeries, then complains that she cannot find a 'real' man
Maynard James Keenan
#23. I see a lot of patterns in our behavior as a nation that parallel a lot of other historical processes.
Maynard James Keenan
#24. Most religious stories and mythologies have some sort of similar root, some sort of global archetypes.
Maynard James Keenan
#25. I think the media made Manson, turned him into some larger than life figure and surrounded him with mystery and some shady glamour.
Maynard James Keenan
#26. Because artists can be extremely eccentric and insane, and unfortunately, the people they hurt the most are the people that are closest to them.
Maynard James Keenan
#28. But then it hasn't really been a focus of our government to make us an educated people.
Maynard James Keenan
#29. Yeah, because I think it's more important just to inspire people to wake up one day and pick up a book and start feeling it out for themselves.
Maynard James Keenan
#33. I think the biggest problem working with me would be that I'm an only child, and so I have an internal dialogue that goes on that I just assume you can hear.
Maynard James Keenan
#34. Just in general, any government throughout history hasn't really wanted its people to be educated, because then they couldn't control them as easily.
Maynard James Keenan
#36. You can grow grapes in almost any part of the world. You just have to develop your palate enough to realize wine is an expression of the place where you make it. You don't have to take over the world; just be an artist and express your area.
Maynard James Keenan
#37. The trick is to use the drugs once to get there, and maybe spend the next ten years trying to get back there without the drug.
Maynard James Keenan
#39. If you want to get your soul to heaven, trust in me. Don't judge or question. You are broken now, but faith can heal you. Just do everything I tell you to do.
Maynard James Keenan
#40. Knuckle deep inside the borderline.
This may hurt a little but it's something you'll get used to.
Relax. Slip away.
Maynard James Keenan
#42. 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.
Maynard James Keenan
#44. 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.
Maynard James Keenan
#45. I'm not an educated man. I only know what I'm told, and I'm not told that much; I have no frame of reference for how to place things in history be a responsible leader. All I can do is be an artist.
Maynard James Keenan
#46. Nowadays, you have to sell, like, half a million or a million records just to break even.
Maynard James Keenan
#47. 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.
Maynard James Keenan
#48. For me, life is writing and I can do it anywhere. It doesn't matter where I am. I listen. I write. I live.
Maynard James Keenan
#49. 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.
Maynard James Keenan
#50. Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability
To lift an eye to heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here
Maynard James Keenan
#53. 115.Something kinda sad about the way that things have come to be. Desensitized to everything. What became of subtlety? How can this mean anything to me..If I really don't feel anything at all?
Maynard James Keenan
#56. 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.
Maynard James Keenan
#57. The process that we go through in recording with Tool is very organic, but at the same time it is very thought out. There is a very left-brain process of dissecting what we're doing and drawing from source material; it's very research oriented and esoteric.
Maynard James Keenan
#58. I think that every collective that you witness occurring on a stage, it's not about any one of the individuals. There's something that's happened that's kind of put all that stuff together into a much bigger result ... some alchemy.
Maynard James Keenan
#60. Life feeds on life ... feeds on life feeds on life ... this is neccesary ... this is necessary life feeds on life ... feeds on life
Maynard James Keenan
#62. Novell has the necessary resources to be a much more profitable enterprise but it currently lacks the vision, strategy and execution to produce respectable returns.
Maynard James Keenan
#63. I believe that when you go into a gallery or a museum, the most powerful pieces are the ones that don't have the words in the corner that distract you from the larger piece.
Maynard James Keenan
#64. I feel like there's no real innovation in having some music. It's more just unique personalities and unique expressions, and you being able to tell your story.
Maynard James Keenan
#65. People have to follow their hearts, and if their hearts lead them to WalMart, so be it.
Maynard James Keenan
#68. The army influences everything I do. Certainly it teaches you discipline, which is a necessary element of development. I think there's more of a collaborative understanding in the band because of that.
Maynard James Keenan
#69. Cold silence has a tendency to
atrophy any
sense of compassion
between supposed lovers
Maynard James Keenan
#70. I feel like with music there's so much ego rooted in expressing your thoughts and your experiences with it.
Maynard James Keenan
#71. 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.
Maynard James Keenan
#75. I know the pieces fit 'cause I watched them tumble down
No fault, none to blame, it doesn't mean I don't desire to
Point the finger, blame the other, watch the temple topple over
To bring the pieces back together, rediscover communication.
Maynard James Keenan
#76. 102. Scramble to reach higher ground. Order and sanity, something to comfort me.
Maynard James Keenan
#77. If you take different mythologies from different cultures, the names may change and the story lines may vary but there is always something in common.
Maynard James Keenan
#78. Every now and then, you get people who tend to forget what this country is about, which is a melting pot of races and cultures and freedom of speech.
Maynard James Keenan
#80. Recognize this as a holy gift and celebrate this chance to be alive and breathing.
Maynard James Keenan
#83. After all, in today's music scene every band seems to steal from other bands.
Maynard James Keenan
#84. I would hope they would be our fellow artists, rather than trying to emulate or idolize clowns like us.
Maynard James Keenan
#85. Adam does most of the work when it comes to videos and he basically does the same as I do with the lyrics. The videos are his visual interpretations of our music.
Maynard James Keenan
#86. 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.
Maynard James Keenan
#87. Jesus Christ, why dont you come save my life.
Open my eyes and blind me with your light
and your lies.
Maynard James Keenan
#88. It's a purging of sorts. Like, when you're all done doing your laundry and it's fresh and bright, but washing the clothes, you wouldn't want to get in while it's spinning around.
Maynard James Keenan
#89. People get upset and it becomes an excuse to treat other people a certain way,but if you really step back, you realize what you've left behind.
Maynard James Keenan
#90. There are people who are like monkeys in a cage just hitting the coke button. They don't really get that for [musicians and artists] to do these things, they have to fund them. They have to have something to pay the rent.
Maynard James Keenan
#91. At some point, if you're lucky, you realize you're not the story. You're part of the story. The story is much bigger than you.
Maynard James Keenan
#93. I always knew that I wanted to be creative, that I wanted to create something.
Maynard James Keenan
#94. 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.
Maynard James Keenan
#95. But I'm a hot-blooded Italian by nature. Whatever the situation you present, I'm going to make something out of it.
Maynard James Keenan
#96. Desert, in generally, is a very good place to find yourself. Or lose yourself.
Maynard James Keenan
#98. 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.
Maynard James Keenan
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
