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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Chris Cornell Quotes

There wasn’t a key moment when I knew I wanted to quit.

– Chris Cornell

It’s great when you play to an audience that knows the words to all your songs, and sings them back to you.

– Chris Cornell

I can go from one extreme to another, from playing at the Sydney Opera House on the Songbook tour to shows with Soundgarden at Voodoo Fest, all in a week.

– Chris Cornell

And if you don’t believe the sun will rise, stand alone and greet the coming night in the last remaining light.

– Chris Cornell

I’m not a lyric writer to make statements. What I enjoy doing is making paintings with lyrics, creating colorful images. I think that’s more what entertainment and music should be.

– Chris Cornell

A true musician, like Johnny Cash, should be able to walk into a room with nothing but an instrument and capture people’s attention for two hours.

– Chris Cornell

Rock never meant the same thing to everyone, but when I was growing up in the late seventies, everyone could identify the five, ten bands that formed the center.

– Chris Cornell

‘The Beatles’ did whatever they wanted. They were a collection of influences adapted to songs they wanted to write. George Harrison was instrumental in bringing in Indian music. Paul McCartney was a huge Little Richard fan. John Lennon was into minimalist aggressive rock.

– Chris Cornell

In the United States, workouts tend to focus on body image and how you look. For me, it’s really all about the brain.

– Chris Cornell

When you start your first band and it has an impact on the rest of the world you go through a lot with those guys and you become very protective of that legacy.

– Chris Cornell

To me, music shouldn’t be ego-driven. When you go out on stage and play songs, it is. But when you’re sitting in a room, writing songs, it’s a completely different process. It’s a completely different place. It’s a creative place, a musical place. It has nothing to do with who likes what.

– Chris Cornell

Children should always feel like the adults are living in this world to nurture them, to take care of them, to protect them from any bad thing that might come.

– Chris Cornell

What do you think Jesus would twitter, ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone’ or ‘Has anyone seen Judas? He was here a minute ago.’

– Chris Cornell

I’ve had a long career and I want to continue to have a long career. The way to do that is not to go away.

– Chris Cornell

I have a hard time narrowing things down to ten or 12 songs. If I walk off stage in anything less than two hours, it just feels strange. It feels early.

– Chris Cornell

I think that one of the main privileges of what I do, which I am just starting to learn, is to have the ability to travel all over the world and experience different cultures.

– Chris Cornell

There’s something about losing friends, particularly young people, where it’s not something that you get over. I don’t believe there’s a healing process.

– Chris Cornell

At the end of the day it’s the fans who make you who you are.

– Chris Cornell

I had to teach myself to let go of the conventional rock way of playing guitar and singing. Some things you wouldn’t expect to work, did and some things won’t ever work.

– Chris Cornell

I don’t get in there and create a character. It’s more of a voice that I hear living inside the music.

– Chris Cornell

What’s important is to get into shape and then not to have to worry about it. I don’t want to get on stage and not being able to do something. Not being physically fit doesn’t work for me.

– Chris Cornell

To a degree, rock fans like to live vicariously and they like that, music fans in general, but when indie music sort of came into prominence in the early ’90s, a lot of it was TV-driven, too, where if you saw the first Nirvana video, you’re looking at three guys that look like people you go to school with.

– Chris Cornell

I never wrote music or arranged songs or lyrics when I was under the influence of anything but coffee. That’s not gone away.

– Chris Cornell

The reason there’s no modern-day Shakespeare is because he didn’t have anything to do except sit in a room with a candle and think.

– Chris Cornell

If I’m going to go out to be a solo artist, it’s because I want to do something different without having to wait on someone else’s schedule or hobbies or be limited by other people’s prejudices. I’d be kind of stupid not to exercise that.

– Chris Cornell

I’m not usually in a talkative mode.

– Chris Cornell