Eddie Vedder Quotes

If it's a band I like, I just hope they will survive it all. And I'll admit that if it's crap music, I hope they won't and it'll go away. Simply because there are too many great bands who should be heard in their place.

That makes it even more offensive to me that she's interested in our band and she did something for Slaughter.

I used to kind of blame someone for not being able to get through that - I'm talking about the addiction part - but I've had a few experiences recently where you don't blame the person anymore.

There is a thing that happens when you are not as privileged and you start hanging out with a seedier crowd because you can afford to do the same things, And all of a sudden the big night out is sitting in somebody's trailer, smoking something or getting hold of something to put up to your nose.

I'm angry that George Bush got to be in the White House, and I'm angry that [Al] Gore wasn't able to be a better candidate after eight years of a great economy and being an incumbent.

There are times where I would keep three typewriters on a table, and I'd have three complete thoughts going. With computers, you make folders, files - I don't know about those things. I have sheaves of paper polluted with words and paragraphs. I found it a good tool for me. And it keeps your hands strong for guitar playing.

We went from an era when rock 'n' roll meant wearing a bustier as a woman and these spandex things and guys trying to portray someone that wasn't realistic. We are trying to make it seem real... relate to our lives.

Pretty much at all times music motivates me. How can I say this without sounding in any way proud of myself? Obviously I've always written songs that are critical of our government, and talk about our times. Hopefully you attempt to be timeless while doing it.

Sometimes, whether you like it or not, people elevate you. It's real easy to fall.

I would think we have a trajectory of failure on the Republicans' part. When you think about how they managed to make John Kerry look bad during the last election for actually serving in Vietnam, and testifying in Congress after he'd gotten medals, and said that he didn't believe in them or that he didn't believe in the war and that it should stop . . . That they could turn that in negative when their guy, George W. Bush, never even went to Vietnam.

You can't be perfect. You can't be the perfect father. You can't be the perfect singer.

You mature as far as your understanding of what it's going to take, and you increase your stamina. You don't let frustration overtake you when you're looking for change.

I'm really high... I mean the altitude of course.

It's not a bad time to be me.

i change by not changing at all

Wait a minute, yes, those are human heads.

I'm an example of someone who never made it to university. I did have this dream to be a musician. I felt that this dream had an expiration date.

There's a lot of bands that get to a certain level, and it just stops. They scrap it. Compare this to, say, The Rolling Stones or The Who, where they just continued on forever and are still playing, or they quit after 20 years.

Caffeine. The gateway drug.

I probably get strangers coming up to me two or three times a week to just say something nice.

It's an art to live with pain... mix the light into gray.

If he can't sleep, how will he ever dream?

When I had a child, everyone was telling me that I was going to see the world through her eyes, and everything was going to get this nice gloss to it. I kept waiting for that to happen, and thought there was a real problem with me that it wasn't.

Playing music for as long as I had been playing music and then getting a shot at making a record and at having an audience and stuff, it's just like an untamed force... a different kind of energy.

Sometimes I hear news about the huge dollars involved with CEO pay and corporate-management salaries, and I'm mystified at how someone can justify taking that much at the cost of other people's livelihoods. In a bizarre way, I'm almost kind of curious, like "How can they absolve themselves and enjoy their wealth?" I don't understand it.

I feel like we have to keep our eyes on the road. Being nostalgic is like taking an offramp and getting a sandwich - and then you get back on the highway. I don't want to be spending the rest of my life at the gas station.

I've been writing and collecting songs on the ukulele for at least 10 years, so it was time to clear them out of the apartment building and make room for some new occupants.I need to make room for the bassoon record.

Any conversations we hear about 'So who are Pearl Jam marketing to?' are despicable.

I wish I was the verb 'to trust' and never let you down.

I remember back in 1994 when the Eagles charged more than $100 for tickets. They said, 'We ain't Pearl Jam.' That's back when records were selling and the Eagles had sold just about as many as anyone on the planet. And years later we're still charging less than them.

I realized in the early days I just didn't edit at all. But I think you become a little more cagey with your lyrics when you know more people are going to hear them and make assumptions about you as a person. Realizing that, you want to be a little more opaque.

I'll ride the wave, where it takes me!

The smallest oceans still make big big waves.

Competition is healthy, if you can turn it off and on. When someone gets too cocky in victory, that can ruin the positive aspect.

It’s a song about first relationships and letting go. It’s very rare for a relationship to withstand the Earth’s gravitational pull and where it’s going to take people and how they’re going to grow. I’ve heard it said that you can’t really have a true love unless it was a love unrequited. It’s a harsh one, because then your truest one is the one you can’t have forever.

He who forgets will be destined to remember.

Worship the music, not the musicians.

Music's at its best when it has a purpose.

I'm probably never happier than when I'm by myself in the water. What I've worked and sacrificed for is not to be on stage playing music but to surf in some secluded place. It's a grounding element. Waves don't care who you are.

If you're anti-war it doesn't mean you are 'pro' one side or the other in a conflict.

The nice thing about money is that you can do good things with it. I still feel like if something needs to be done or we need to raise money for someone on death row, we can find ways to do it.

If at noon you sit down and there's just silence or blank tape, in an hour if you have a song, that didn't exist an hour ago. Now it exists and it might exist for a long time. There's something empowering about that.

I've had a lot of typewriters that I've had relationships with; one still has a piece of masking tape that says "$8" on it. I love working on them. I can't fix a computer or a car, but I can fix a typewriter. I like them because you can write on them late at night, depending on what you're fortifying yourself with, and the next morning you can still figure what you wrote.

When it comes to grunge or even just Seattle, I think there was one band that made the definitive music of the time. It wasn't us or Nirvana, but Mudhoney. Nirvana delivered it to the world, but Mudhoney were the band of that time and sound.

I'm over smoking. You know, I feel like I've gone on long hikes and gotten to the top of the mountain and I'm looking at something beautiful, some great huge landscape, and there's some of the cleanest air that's on the planet. And then I light up, and say, "Ahh, what a great smoking moment this is!" So it's something evil that's taken over, and I want control over it.

You feel that no matter what's said in the music or how pointed it may get, the most you can wish for is that it plants a few seeds.

Die on a hilltop... eyeing the crows... waiting for your lids to close... but you want to watch as they peck your flesh... Ironic that they go for the eyes first.

The one thing about going from the audience to the stage in just three years is that you know how it feels to be down there.