Chris Cornell

“I've always liked depressing music because a lot of times, listening to it when you're down can actually make you feel less depressed. Also, even though a person may have problems with depression, sometimes you can actually be kind of comfortable in that space because you know how to operate within it.”

“A lot of people get into alternative music as part of their identity. It's something that isn't the mainstream, that their brothers and sisters don't know about, and that their parents don't like. It's something they can have as their own.”

“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.”

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

“I think my children are definitely musically inclined, and they show it, and they're exposed to a lot of it. And they're their own people, and I think easily they could do something musical, or they could do something in acting or film or other types of the arts, and I would fully support it.”

“Stone Temple Pilots, Bush, and Silverchair are taking the simplest elements of Soundgarden, Nirvana, and Pearl Jam and melding them into one homogenous thing.”

“I don't really go mountain biking per se, like a proper sport.”

“Audioslave was something that I felt had become a career decision. It became three albums over a period of years touring with a specific group of people.”

“Criticism pretty much follows anything anyone ever does. So, anytime anyone ever writes a song, plays a show, or does whatever they do, there's going to be a certain amount of criticism because that's kind of what happens.”

“You can't always make out the words I sing with Soundgarden.”

“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.”

“My brother brought home 'At San Quentin' when I was about 7, and we played it over and over again.”

“In spite of my lack of education, I didn't lack direction.”

“I would look at older blues musicians who just keep going into their seventies. They keep doing it until they drop dead. And I've always felt like that's what I want to do. I've felt that since the day I was able to start playing music for a living. I don't see the point of thinking about retiring because it's not work to begin with.”

“When you become a parent, you leave a lot of things behind and refocus, maybe on how simple life really is and what few things there really are to worry about. And everything else can go by the wayside.”

“I just kind of went into the blue-collar workforce at a really young age and discovered music, in terms of being a musician, around the same time. The good news is, I was probably 17 when I knew that's what I was going to do with the rest of my life, no matter what that meant.”

“I never thought of myself as being the singer that wanted to create an identity and then stick to that.”

“'Black Hole Sun' was written in a car when I was driving home from the studio one night. Pretty much everything that you hear was written in my head.”

“I'm not usually in a talkative mode.”

“Seattle very much benefited from this geography where it was a town nobody had really heard of in terms of a music scene. So we had that factor of being a new discovery.”