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The Great Gatsby
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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Rivers Cuomo Quotes

Probably the most reliable comfort music for me over the years has been Bach.

– Rivers Cuomo

I think I’ve been skeptical of violent passion for a long time. I think ‘Pinkerton’ is about that a lot – seeing how, every time I’ve felt really passionate for someone, as soon as I ‘acquire’ them or feel like I’ve acquired them, the passion goes away.

– Rivers Cuomo

In some ways, I feel like I was Nirvana’s biggest fan in the Nineties. I’m sure there are a zillion people who would make that claim, but I was just so passionately in love with the music that it made me feel sick. It made my heart hurt.

– Rivers Cuomo

I really don’t need to suffer. I can really become a happy person and still make good music – in fact, better music.

– Rivers Cuomo

I do want to make music that people love, but I also want to make music that I love. I know I can’t please everyone with anything I do, so I don’t think too much about how other people are going to take things.

– Rivers Cuomo

I think if I wasn’t a musician, I would be a high-school band director or orchestra director. I like working with large groups of musicians and bringing out the dynamics and accomplishing something as a team.

– Rivers Cuomo

Meditation hasn’t separated me from my life and my friends and my work. It’s just made my fear go away, so I can just be that much more engaged.

– Rivers Cuomo

I found that so many people in the music business started out as metalheads in the Eighties – whether they’re songwriters, producers, engineers or executives, and no matter what they look like, with short hair, suits or whatever. I feel like my generation of metal kids really tends to populate the music world to a large extent.

– Rivers Cuomo

Weezer isn’t stuck in roles, so we just do what we want to do, what makes us excited.

– Rivers Cuomo

I love writing songs. One of the toughest things is structure; it just works when you use verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge. And as soon as you become aware of that formula, you start to have a bad conscience when you write with that particular structure.

– Rivers Cuomo

I like to get input from all different kinds of listeners, including the really conservative ones, and sometimes those listeners steer me in a direction that I haven’t seen. But at the end of the day, my vote is always to go in the direction that makes me the most excited.

– Rivers Cuomo

I listen to music a lot on the treadmill – I would test ‘Raditude’ songs out on the treadmill.

– Rivers Cuomo

I’m just living each day, and I’m better equipped to do so. I mean, I used to be totally afraid, I used to have, like, permanent stage fright. But now I’m trying to have fun. I’m trying to bring as much happiness to as many people as possible.

– Rivers Cuomo

I was fixated on Prince’s ‘Black Album’ for a long time.

– Rivers Cuomo

I’m often troubled by a very strong instinct to share everything that’s going on with me. I want to feel that connection, even with people I don’t know. Then this other voice says, ‘That’s not prudent. People will use what you’ve said to hurt you.’

– Rivers Cuomo

I really want to disappear, grow a beard, not talk to anyone, not make any friends… I just want to disappear and study.

– Rivers Cuomo

With each step I take, I see that my ability to perform gets a little better. So until it starts getting worse, I’m going to keep moving forward.

– Rivers Cuomo

People think I’m a freak or something, but I’m actually a really normal guy.

– Rivers Cuomo

Rock and Roll Over’ was the first Kiss album I heard, but I was totally oblivious to their whole image and the makeup and all that. I was so out of touch with the wider world.

– Rivers Cuomo

Now that I’m a father, I’ve forgiven my parents.

– Rivers Cuomo

The most nerve-wracking experience is an oral presentation in class. And right under that would be doing ‘Saturday Night Live’ or ‘David Letterman.’ One of those shows.

– Rivers Cuomo

I always like balance. If I’m playing rock music all the time, chances are I’ll start craving some lighter, poppier stuff, both to listen to and to play. I compare music to massage. If someone’s been working on your back for a long time, you really want them to move down to your legs or something.

– Rivers Cuomo

I just went to the hobby shop and got an electricity kit and a chemistry kit, and I’m really excited to do experiments like squeezing an egg into a bottle and growing crystals. I’m really getting into hobbies.

– Rivers Cuomo

I have a natural instinct to feel guilty and that I’ve let people down. I’ve apologized in more songs than ‘Back to the Shack.’ Going back to our second record, the closing lines are ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’ It’s definitely part of my personality.

– Rivers Cuomo

At 18, I moved to L.A. with my heavy metal band Avant Garde, which was very much influenced by Metallica. At 19, I got a job at Tower Records, and everything started to change very quickly. I started listening to the Velvet Underground, Pixies, early Nirvana, Sonic Youth, and also earlier music like the Beatles.

– Rivers Cuomo

New country music comprises about five percent of what I hear per year. I enjoy it, but I don’t really take note of who’s singing it or writing it.

– Rivers Cuomo

Rock guitar has been around for decades now, and there are so many strong traditions, and so much of it is just burned into my fingers. So, nine times out of 10, when I pick up the guitar to jam something, it sounds pretty cliche.

– Rivers Cuomo

Certainly, the Beach Boys and the early Beatles records were a huge influence on me lyrically.

– Rivers Cuomo

It’s so important to me that I feel like I’m doing something that’s never been done before, whether that’s in the show, or I’m writing a song. I can exist in this little box here, but I have to do something new with it.

– Rivers Cuomo

I signed up for eHarmony once, and it took three hours to fill out that online form – so many personal questions. Then I clicked on submit, and instantaneously they responded and said, ‘We are sorry, but there is no one any where in the world that is appropriate for you.’ So that was it – I gave up.

– Rivers Cuomo

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