Fear has governed my life, if I think about 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.
Today, if you do put out a record on a label, traditionally, most people are going to hear it via a leak that happens two weeks - if not two months - before it comes out. There's no real way around that.
Jumping through any hoop or taking advantage of any desperate situation that comes up just to sell a product is harmful. It is.
I had to come to terms about becoming an addict, which, for a long time, I lied to myself about the status of until I couldn't lie any more, 'cause I was either going to die or get better.
I found that when I was putting my own music out, with my Twitter feed as the pure marketing budget, I'm preaching to the choir.
My input for the first 16, 17 years of my life was AM radio, FM radio - pretty mainstream stuff. Rolling Stone was probably as edgy as it got.
What I have appreciated about the 'Call of Duty' games is the scale of production. It's not an indie game. It's not trying to be an indie game. But I've genuinely been pretty consistently blown away by, wow, what an effort has gone into this.
The reality is that people think it's okay to steal music.
Schoolwork came easy to me. I learned to play piano effortlessly. I was coasting.
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.
Bow down before the one you serve, you're going to get what you deserve.
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.
I was up above it. Now, I'm down in it.
I feel uncomfortable because I'm insecure about who I am.
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.
If I go onstage, I want to give people everything they want and more. I'll wash their car for them on their way out.
You know, if nobody knows who you are, nobody's going to buy your record.
As long as it feels valid to me and feels sincere, I'll do what I do under the moniker of Nine Inch Nails if it's appropriate. I would hate to think I would ever be in a position where I'm faking it to get a paycheck.
When I first played 'Wolfenstein 3D,' it blew my mind. It had a big impact on me.
Nine Inch Nails is like building an army to go conquer. We build it, then we play, and we have to play so much to validate building it, financially. It leads to getting burn-out because a tour that would be fun if it lasted three weeks has to last 15 weeks.
I did not grow up in a cosmopolitan environment. I grew up in a little town in the middle of nowhere, pre-Internet, pre-college radio.
I have been wildly enthused about gaming since I was younger, and a career path I chose not to go down but did really consider was getting into programming and game design.
I think it's just an awkward time right now to be a musician.
I realized that I was afraid to really, really try something, 100%, because I had never reached true failure.
I thought my goal in life was to be in a successful band, and I had got that, but I was as miserable as I had ever been, and I couldn't understand why that would be.
Though I still have no semblance of a life outside of Nine Inch Nails at the moment, I realize my goals have gone from getting a record deal or selling another record to being a better person, more well-rounded, having friends, having a relationship with somebody.
I do actually believe in love. I can't say that I'm 100 percent successful in that department, but I think it's one of the few worthwhile human experiences. It's cooler than anything I can think of right now.
I think there's something strangely musical about noise.
In my nothing, you were everything, to me.
'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.
iTunes kind of feels like Sam Goody to me. I don't feel cool when I go there. I'm tired of seeing John Mayer's face pop up.
I was never a Lime Wire guy because it's too much hassle to find the song.
Books are better than movies because you design the set the way you want it to look.
In Nine Inch Nails, I've been the guy calling the shots since inception. I'd gotten used to that.
I think it's easy to make impenetrable music that nobody can get, and you can hide behind that sometimes.
You're standing onstage in a sold-out arena with people singing your music, and you feel like the loneliest person in the world. Because here's a party that, essentially, it's for you. And you still somehow feel like you don't belong there. Those people all have their lives and go back home.
I used to buy vinyl. Today, if you do put out a record on a label, traditionally, most people are going to hear it via a leak that happens two weeks - if not two months - before it comes out. There's no real way around that.
I realized when I was 23 that I had never really tried anything.
I write most of my songs when I'm in a bad mood.
I foolishly thought that if I just 'made it' then everything would be okay. And everything wasn't okay.
I've become impossible, holding on to when everything seemed to matter more.
This isn't meant to last. This is for right now.
Sometimes we pee on each other before we go on stage.
Apparently, the image of our president is as offensive to MTV as it is to me.
