Danny Carey

“No one can be their best every night.”

“We rarely write in the studio. Everything's already completely arranged before we go in. That way, we can really focus on getting the recording right.”

“It drove me mad not being able to know more about Pink Floyd when I was a little kid. But that's the great thing - there was this mystery behind it, and we couldn't find out enough. It made your mind work, it made you seek after it or try to interpret it. It made you envision or imagine what they were doing.”

“It kind of renews my faith in humankind that there's long attention spans left out there that can listen to a 12-minute song.”

“Tony Williams, Billy Cobham and Lenny White; some of those guys were big influences on me.”

“The sincerity of delivery is what always strikes me when I hear a good band. It's artist-expression driven, as opposed to being record-producer driven. There's a huge difference. One's motivation is impure, while the other is the highest form of expression, so that's what you aim for.”

“It's pretty weird to me that our music is as popular as it is.”

“Pink Floyd and Yes and some of the old art-rock bands, you didn't know what they looked like. You were always looking for pictures, and that added to the mystique. It's much more interesting when you're forced to imagine or guess at these things because usually it's better than reality.”

“We're dealing with the chaos of life, and we're rubbing it down. The deeper you rub, the more patterns you can see until you realize that it's really an organized chaos. There isn't really ever any chance to understand it all, but we're here to keep rubbing.”

“The lead singer is such a prominent thing, where drums are more of a supporting instrument.”

“You can equate our music to childbirth. It's brutal and harsh, but there's still a beautiful thing occurring.”

“Stylistically, we're trying to push things in different ways, but it always comes out sounding like Tool no matter what we're trying to do.”

“The thing is, the way we write is all jams and bits and pieces that get pieced together and sometimes things are written with intentions of being a song, and then all of a sudden the main riff of this song, six months later turns into a verse or a chorus of another song.”

“Chaos is the undercurrent of everything that happens in life.”

“Anybody who digs your art, you what to share it with.”

“Our fans are loyal as can be, that's for sure.”

“I think there is a collective unconsciousness, or some sort of consciousness, that you can tap into if you're open and brave enough to let everything go and be part of that.”

“We've never really been susceptible to pressure from anyone from the outside. We've been really good at negating any outside influences. We're really hard on ourselves. The filter that we put upon things qualifying to end up on a Tool record is pretty extreme, so we figure we've got that part of it under control.”

“The drums can get pretty boring as a solo instrument.”