What is exciting is taking back the excitement of being able to debut something to an audience in exactly the way you want to.

- Trent Reznor

When I'm writing music, I'm not playing a character. I'm not Alice Cooper or Gene Simmons or someone like that, who has acknowledged that they are writing music for a character.

- Trent Reznor

I'm a lot less precious than I used to be about putting things out, for better or for worse. The result of a public that has a very high consumption rate and turnover rate is people listen to more music but spend less time with individual bits of music.

- Trent Reznor

I'd never want to be Gene Simmons, an old man who puts on makeup to entertain kids, like a clown going to work.

- Trent Reznor

I would love to be looked at some day - and I'm not ever saying I'm at this level - but I'd love to be mentioned in the same breath as a Bowie or an Eno. Those are the people that I admire artistically, their career trajectory, the integrity throughout their career, the bravery of their career.

- Trent Reznor

In my nothing, you were everything, to me.

- Trent Reznor

I don't even know why I'm saying this in an interview situation, but I always feel like I'm not good enough for some reason. I wish that wasn't the case, but left to my own devices, that voice starts speaking up.

- Trent Reznor

I wanted to escape Small Town U.S.A. To dismiss the boundaries, to explore. My life experience came from watching movies, TV, and reading books and magazines. When your culture comes from watching TV everyday, you're bombarded with images of things that seem cool, places that seem interesting, people who have jobs and careers and opportunities.

- Trent Reznor

I've learned to recognize, a lot of it forced through the process of recovery, that I'm wired wrong in certain ways; the chemical balance of my brain is off in terms of depression a little bit.

- Trent Reznor

When Twitter made its way to my radar I looked at it as a curiosity, then started experimenting. I approached that as a place to be less formal and more off-the-cuff, honest and 'human.'

- Trent Reznor

When David Fincher called me up a few years ago and said, 'Hey, I'd like you to score this film 'The Social Network,' I said, 'I'm flattered, but I really don't have any real experience scoring films, and I'd rather not screw it up on a high-profile project. And I like you and I don't want to compromise our friendship.'

- Trent Reznor

And when the day arrives I'll become the sky and I'll become the sea and the sea will come to kiss me for I am going home. Nothing can stop me now.

- Trent Reznor

I write most of my songs when I'm in a bad mood.

- Trent Reznor

To me, rock music was never meant to be safe. I think there needs to be an element of intrigue, mystery, subversiveness. Your parents should hate it.

- Trent Reznor

You can punch a wall or write a song. Just as painful either way, but you have something to show for it at the end of the day with a song.

- Trent Reznor

Live interaction with a crowd is a cathartic, spiritual kind of exchange, and it's intensified at a festival.

- Trent Reznor

Balance is good, because one extreme or the other leads to misery, and I've spent a lot of my life at one of those extremes.

- Trent Reznor

I really try to put myself in uncomfortable situations. Complacency is my enemy.

- Trent Reznor

It's a humbling thing, having kids. One of my sons came to rehearsals, and now he says Daddy's job is 'go play loud music.'

- Trent Reznor

'Downward Spiral' felt like I had an unending bottomless pit of rage and self-loathing inside me and I had to somehow challenge something or I'd explode. I thought I could get through by putting everything into my music, standing in front of an audience and screaming emotions at them from my guts.

- Trent Reznor