King Diamond

“I don't believe in heaven, and I don't believe in hell as a place with flames where people are burning and having eternal pain. I don't believe in that at all. I believe in a place I call 'beyond.'”

“When you hear 'From the Other Side,' it's like being on an operating table. Suddenly, you're on the ceiling looking down at the doctors who are fighting for you. Are you gonna get a second chance or not?”

“When you have a nightmare, you think, 'What caused this?' And then you can sometimes get the same scenario two or three nights, back to back. Or something really bad happens, and you feel absolutely sad and do not want it to be real. You don't want to fall asleep and get sucked back into that same dream.”

“I have a braided metal wire going down the middle of my chest underneath my skin. I saw it on an X-ray of it; it looks like a piece of jewelry.”

“I've always been fascinated by horror.”

“Led Zeppelin is what made me buy my first electric guitar: the Jimmy Page guitar sound.”

“King Diamond was always more satanic than Mercyful Fate. And I'm not saying anything bad about Mercyful Fate - I love that band but sometimes people forget that King Diamond is the satanic philosophy through and through.”

“I was lucky that I had parents that had had supernatural experiences, so I could talk to them openly without them looking at me as some lunatic.”

“I don't believe in one God, and I would be the last person to say there is one because there is no real proof there is a God, and there has been no one person to prove to the world there is a God.”

“I have not thrown my money away on unnecessary things in my life, so I'm okay.”

“You are not worshipping anything when you are a Satanist.”

“'The Shining' has always been my favorite horror movie. It is scary and incredibly psychological without relying on blood and gore. Jack Nicholson's performance is absolutely mind-blowing. And the mood and the feel is definitely metal.”

“When I use the word 'Satan,' it doesn't stand for a guy with horns. To me, that word means the powers of the unknown, the powers of darkness.”

“I don't like award ceremonies.”

“If you sing the way I do, I get about one-fifth of the oxygen that the other guys in the band get. It doesn't make anything easier.”

“One day, I found this book at a used bookstore with 'Satanic Bible' written on the cover, and I thought maybe I should read it and see what it is. I thought it was like a religion, but then I read the book, and what was in it was pure life philosophy - and it was a life philosophy that described how I felt at that point.”

“I lived in a house in Copenhagen that was uber-haunted for many years, with flying teacups and things like that; there was a time when I saw glasses rising off the table, and I took it as a sign of something saying, 'Hey, we're with you.'”

“People from all walks of life that you might find as a King Diamond fan - you don't look a certain way; you don't have to say certain things. It can be anyone.”

“I was a made an eternal member of the Church of Satan by Anton LeVey himself in 1988.”

“I welcome the powers of the unknown.”