John Dolmayan

“The bottom line is that although you can do something on your own, even with my solo album, 'These Grey Men,' I didn't have the benefit of the three other guys in my band who are so instrumental in developing the sound that I've come to be accustomed to, the song quality, the writing style, the lyrical content.”

“The question I like to raise to people is at the end of the day, if the richest and biggest corporations think one way, shouldn't you at least research the other way of thinking?”

“If we were concerned about what people think, System wouldn't exist.”

“Everything I'm going to release is going to be exceptional or else I'm not going to release it.”

“I want what's best for everyone, but I want everybody to have the freedom to do these things.”

“I started selling in the early '90s, because at 18 years old, it's tough to go to your parents and say, 'Can I have some money for comic books?' Initially, I started off by losing a lot of money trying to sell books at conventions and stuff like that until I figured out how to do it.”

“Maybe I'm nuts or maybe my philosophies have a ring of truth to them, but I just think that there's interesting coincidences and convenient things that happen to motivate things.”

“The bottom line is the bigger you get as a band, the more people tell you how great you are in the band and how your role is the most important role, and some people listen a little more than others and become enamored with their own ideas and kind of have to have an identity outside of the band, and other people don't.”

“The reality is none of us should have time to do other projects. We should be so focused on the band and working on the band and exploring our talents within it, making music that people can listen to within the confines of System of a Down that we shouldn't have time for anything else.”

“Truth And Soul' is the first Fishbone album I purchased.”

“Of course you don't want to hurt your neighbors - you want everybody to succeed and prosper - but at the end of the day, if you're not focused on your home, you're not gonna be able to help anybody else anyway.”

“Yeah, if my bandmembers listened to me and put everything to the side and just said, 'Okay, let's just go in and make the best album we can make and not care about where the music comes from or who wrote the lyrics or what this person did in the past.' I'm willing to put all that aside. I'm not in a band that'll do that, unfortunately.”

“You have a little bit of fear once you've already risked something big and failed.”

“I will fight to the death for a communist's right to say what they want to say here in the United States. And I couldn't be more opposed to the ideology.”

“I always enjoyed doing covers.”

“I want people to have the same feeling that I felt the first time I walked into a comic-book store. It was just a feeling of awe. I want to create that for comic-book people.”

“I'm not a fan of doing covers that sound exactly like the original. If you're going to take it, you've got to make it your own, one way or the other.”

“I wouldn't want to go in and make an album that doesn't represent the best that we have to offer.”

“No matter what, Daron is one of the best songwriters I've ever seen in my life.”

“I don't mind somebody disagreeing with me - I like that, actually. Because sometimes you'll get an opinion that will help you to reform yours, give you a different perspective. So that's never been the issue, as long as it was done in a respectful manner.”