Malakian Quotes

#1. I just think religion is something ... It could be a beautiful thing for the individual, but when it becomes organized, that's when religion starts taking a kind of ugly turn to me.

Daron Malakian

#2. Superman told me ... that we needed to make a double ... type of record ... and so I answered: 'Okay, Superman. We will make ... a double type of record but it won't be a double album because ... Batman ... didn't want a double album'

Daron Malakian

#3. Basically I write songs, and I need for there to be a home for these songs.

Daron Malakian

#4. I guess you'd say I'm a gearhead. It's not just guitars; I have five or six drum sets, a bunch of keyboards ... It's like Guitar Center exploded, and all the cool stuff dropped in my backyard. I'm a really lucky guy, I have to admit.

Daron Malakian

#5. Why don't presidents fight the war? - Why do they always send the poor?

Daron Malakian

#6. In Glendale, where I live, there's a street called Broadway. The bottoms of the light posts have swastikas on them.

Daron Malakian

#7. I don't get it when people complain that baseball games are too long.

Daron Malakian

#8. I like structuring verses, choruses, but sometimes the verses might be a tango and the choruses might be death metal.

Daron Malakian

#9. Masturbation is good for the right arm.

Daron Malakian

#10. As a musician, I don't think I'm the greatest guitar player. I'm a bigger fan of the drums than I am the guitar; I just happen to play guitar. I play drums almost every day at my house. I wrote a lot of songs behind the drum kit, just having the music and vocals in my head and playing the rhythm.

Daron Malakian

#11. Every song I've written is luck, I think; it's luck - 'How did that just happen?'

Daron Malakian

#12. I don't understand some of the music I hear on MTV or the radio, because they don't mention the times we live in. They have nothing to do with nothing.

Daron Malakian

#13. Does it bother me that some people are burning their own System CDs and taking money out of my pocket? Not really. This has always been about putting the best possible version of the song in the fans hands. It was like selling an artist's painting before he had finished it.

Daron Malakian

#14. I don't think when I'm doing music. Things just happen. I've even taken my clothes off while performing. But then I'm so shy that I can't even take my clothes off in the dressing room, even though it's just the other guys in the band in here with me. It's really weird.

Daron Malakian

#15. Whatever I write has to evolve around my taste in music at that moment, because that always changes.

Daron Malakian

#16. How does a band like System of a Down get big?

Daron Malakian

#17. I'm not very happy. I'm frustrated with human beings. I'm the guy who just wants to smack people in the face and say, 'Wake up!'

Daron Malakian

#18. In the Middle East in the summertime, to keep cool, a lot of people sleep on the rooftops.

Daron Malakian

#19. People's attention spans don't run too long these days.

Daron Malakian

#20. You can't just release double albums and expect people to sit there and devote their time to it.

Daron Malakian

#21. Politicians use religion, and they get their troops riled up with religion.

Daron Malakian

#22. A lot of times, I don't feel responsible for the songs myself. But that's my job or my place in life: to keep my search and catch the ideas before they pass me by.

Daron Malakian

#23. I am depressed sometimes, but it's not what keeps me at home or focused on work.

Daron Malakian

#24. My dad is my biggest influence on me as a musician, even though he's not a musician.

Daron Malakian

#25. If I was money-motivated, I wouldn't have joined a rock band with three other Armenian guys.

Daron Malakian

#26. Music is pretty much all I do.

Daron Malakian

#27. Back in the day, when the emperor or the king or whatever waged war, they went to war, too. But that's been lost in time.

Daron Malakian

#28. You know, even U2 took a little time off, and then they came back with a new sound.

Daron Malakian

#29. Masturbation is great for the right arm

Daron Malakian

#30. System of a Down is the music that I wanted to buy but couldn't find at the store. It's the band I wanted to be a fan of.

Daron Malakian

#31. I ain't got no beef with Obama.

Daron Malakian

#32. I was always searching for something bigger, faster and better, and Slayer came up with that.

Daron Malakian

#33. There's no rule that says you have to make records constantly, like clockwork, to continue being who you are.

Daron Malakian

#34. I would expect another Scars album before another System album.

Daron Malakian

#35. I would never cancel a tour unless I had real reasons and personal things that require my undivided attention.

Daron Malakian

#36. You put too many songs on your record, and it ends up like a family with too many kids: some of them get neglected.

Daron Malakian

#37. Music is an emotion, and I put it out there.

Daron Malakian

#38. I always want to grow and top myself.

Daron Malakian

#39. I'll be honest with you: politically, I have no issue with people, but my beef sometimes is with religion at the end of the day.

Daron Malakian

#40. I don't ever put down bands.

Daron Malakian

#41. I'll always be a member of System of a Down. That will never change.

Daron Malakian

#42. In 'Kill Rock n' Roll,' the choruses came about at the moment I was listening to a lot of the Supremes, and if you listen to that part, you can hear a melody and a harmony there that's not too far away from what the Supremes would probably be doing, but there's heavy guitars in the back.

Daron Malakian

#43. I like to watch retarded people have sex, am I alone?

Daron Malakian

#44. Other kids would take their parents to the toy store and I'd take my mom to the record store.

Daron Malakian