Eddie Vedder Quotations

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

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.

If it's a good cause, I'll play just about anything.

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.

The love received is the love that is saved.

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

I think the hardest thing about making music now is being a great dad at the same time. There's an insanity that goes with writing - a mad scientist thing that you have to go through - and sacrificing a kid's upbringing to do that is not an option.

Music was your real passion, this thing you held dear even above family. It was this relationship that never betrayed you. Once it became your job - this thing that was highly visible, this thing that became about commerce - that's when you were holding onto music like it was a palm tree in a hurricane.

At a certain point, you realize you have a responsibility more behind yourself and your need for adrenaline. I'm glad I did things in my 20s that were more reckless.

I'm trying to break any chain of negative parenting that I might have survived.

Life moves fast. As much as you can learn from your history, you have to move forward.

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 think music is the greatest art form that exists, and I think people listen to music for different reasons, and it serves different purposes. Some of it is background music, and some of it is things that might affect a person's day, if not their life, or change an attitude. The best songs are the ones that make you feel something.

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

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.

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.

The best revenge is to live on and prove yourself.

No matter how good you are, at some point your kids are gonna have to create their own independence and think that Mom and Dad aren't cool, just to establish themselves. That's what adolescence is about. They're gonna go through that no matter what.

There's been times when I've been standing in a line at a movie and someone's hit me with something really heavy about someone really close and how our music has helped them get through it. Even in our darkest moments we try and find something beautiful.

I was living on the wrong side of the tracks in Evanston, Illinois, in a home for boys. We had these Jackson 5 records. I really related to their voices - they were about my age, but they were doing it.

People on death row, the treatment of animals, women's right to choose. So much in America is based on religious fundamentalist Christianity. Grow up! This is the modern world!

You know, rock stardom... I have a hard time discussing that because I don't really accept it. It's not really that tangible. What's really bizarre is how it's used as a thing - you know, 'He's the rock star of politics,' 'He's the rock star of quarterbacks' - like it's the greatest thing in the world.

As far as viewpoints, I think I'm more well-rounded and definitely more educated, and probably more hopeful than I used to be. I think when you're young and you get into a cause, you get frustrated with it within a few years, or six months.

If I'm not on tour or in the studio, I'm in nature somewhere, usually some kind of ocean. Playing music has afforded me that. It's not lost on me that it's a tremendous opportunity to be able to spend your life being surrounded by nature.

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.

When I was 13, I got my first guitar, and I could sort of play Ted Nugent songs, but I couldn't play the solos. But I could play along with entire Ramones songs.

If there was anything that I learned with my own writing process, maybe there's too many choices what to write about. Just the amount of subject matter in the world these days; maybe that feels chaotic for me.

It's fun singing with other people who are really good singers. There's something kind of poignant about braiding a couple vocals.

You know, punk bands now sell with one record - their first or second record - sell 10 times the amount of records than the Ramones did throughout their career with 20-something records. That's why I go over to Johnny Ramone's house and do yard work three times a week, just to absolve some of the guilt.

I just think that all of us in this room should have a voice in how the USA is represented. And he don't allow us our voice, that's all I'm saying.

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.

So my one kid's 4, my other kid's 4 months, I'm 44, Barack Obama is the 44th president - it's all lining up nicely here.

After the Ramones, it was more about new wave for me than punk.

Do you force your kids to pay attention to what's going on, or do you let them live their lives outside of it? My hope is that my child is a strong activist. That would make me most proud.

It's not a bad time to be me.

I've never been a calm, midrange type person.

I don't need drugs to make my life tragic.

I think that if your approach is one where you don't want to alienate anybody, you're going to have to soften the viewpoint or the information that you're offering to such an extent that it doesn't have the power to make any difference. You have to take that risk.

I just have this deep kind of connection to reality of being like... in a way, I feel like a dock worker. I want to stay in connection with my dock-worker side, 'cause that's how I grew up.

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

I just finished touring, and I'm on a detox thing. It's a heavy detox, so nothing in my belly except water, salt, and cayenne pepper.

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.

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.

Our influences are who we are. It's rare that anything is an absolutely pure vision; even Daniel Johnston sounds like the Beatles. And that's the problem with the bands I'm always asked about, the ones derivative of the early Seattle sound. They don't dilute their influences enough.

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

I'd like people to be educated on the voting machines, making sure that our democracy isn't being hijacked by computer technology. There's no reason there can't be a paper trail on those machines.

That's part of the curse: If you're gonna play the song, you better play it. I've tried to phone in 'Jeremy' a few times, and it's tough. It doesn't work.

I had actually been going to Hawaii for quite a while before I ever picked up the uke. I think with anything new you're going to get more enjoyment out of it if it comes to you quickly, and the uke facilitates that.

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.

You can go down the list of great artists and kind of understand that they are products of their environment. Whether it's U2 or Henry Rollins or myself or Johnny Lydon, they're gonna be products of their environment.

The interesting thing is that it seems like George W. Bush would have been happy being the president of anything. He could have been president of Major League Baseball.

I don't know how people do it these days - paparazzi and that kind of thing. That's something I can't even imagine.

I am not a good enough writer to have an agenda or come up with a message and try to put it into a song. It's more like you write what comes to you... You try to reflect the mood of the songs.

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.

I'm not ready to be that guy who can meet with world leaders and all that. It's tremendous what Bono does. I don't know if I could do it, not the way he does. I don't think many people could.

Music's at its best when it has a purpose. In the days of 'Rock Around the Clock' and 'Good Golly, Miss Molly,' the purpose was, like, 'We should be allowed to do this.' We certainly haven't had to go out of our way to find a purpose now.

I don't know what this means. I don't think it means anything.

She tells herself, and everyone else, father is risking his life for our freedoms.

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

I know I was born and I know that I'll die... The in between is mine. I Am Mine

I knew all the rules but the rules did not know me.

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.

It's saying, just stop, and be together. Don't talk now, just breathe and feel each other's presence...

You don't love me. If you really knew me, you wouldn't love me. You love who you think I am. And don't pretend that you know me. Because I don't even know myself.

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

Music saved me; I mean, my upbringing was like a hurricane, and music was the tree I held onto.

I've got my indignation but I'm pure in all my thoughts.

The smallest oceans still make big big waves.

You kill yourself and you make a big old sacrifice and try to get your revenge. That all you're gonna end up with is a paragraph in a newspaper. In the end, it does nothing. Nothing changes. The world goes on and you're gone. The best revenge is to live on and prove yourself.

It's a mystery to me We have a greed with which we have agreed You think you have to want more than you need Until you have it all you won't be free When you want more than you have You think you need And when you think more than you want Your thoughts begin to bleed I think I need to find a bigger place 'Cause when you have more than you think You need more space Society, you're a crazy breed I hope you're not lonely without me Society, crazy and deep I hope you're not lonely without me

He who forgets will be destined to remember....

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.

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.

Dream the dreams of other men, you'll be no ones rival.

Society, you're a crazy breed.

Everytime I see the Spice Girls, it makes me want to try to fly by climbing my roof and strapping bricks to my shoes.

I don't wanna think, I wanna FEEL.

It's a mystery to me; We have a greed, with which we have agreed. You think you have to want more than you need. Until you have it all, you won't be free.

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.

Darkness comes in waves...tell me, why invite it to stay?

I don't work so hard at trying to get every song to be three-dimensional and mean so much. I just want to breathe, right now, with the music.

I don't question our exsistence, I just question our modern needs.

I'm making music for music's sake, and I have an audience I'm proud of.

Wind in my hair, I feel part of everywhere Underneath my being is a road that disappeared Late at night I hear the trees, they're singing with the dead Overhead...

I don't trust nobody, especially when they say something good.

Before music videos first came out, you’d listen to a song with headphones on, sitting in a beanbag chair with your eyes closed, and you’d come up with your own visions, these things that came from within. Then all of a sudden, sometimes even the very first time you heard a song, it was with these visual images attached, and it robbed you of any form of self-expression.

I would do anything to be around music. You don't even have to pay me.

It just seemed like I would. I mean, I didn't know him on a daily basis -- far from it. But, in a way, I don't even feel right being here without him. It's so difficult to really believe he's gone. I still talk about him like he's still here, you know. I can't figure it out. It doesn't make any sense.

Is it O.K. that I speak in English? The only thing I know in Dutch is how to order pot.

i change by not changing at all

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 got a great grandma. Her name is Pearl, and she was at one time married to an Indian chief, who, in a wonderful crossing of cultures, she integrated some of his, and some of hers, and um, it was a combination of peyote and preserves, and it was this hallucinogenic jam.

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.

On bended knee is no way to be free lifting up an empty cup I ask silently that all my destinations will accept the one that's me so I can breath Circles they grow and they swallow people whole half their lives they say goodnight to wive's they'll never know got a mind full of questions and a teacher in my soul so it goes...

Sure as I am breathing, sure as I'm sad I'll keep this wisdom in my flesh I leave here believing more than I had This love has got no ceiling

i know someday you'll have a beautiful life. I know you'll be a sun in somebody else's sky. But why can't it be mine?

It's important to have a life and spend time outside of those things [music and politics], in order to appreciate what you've achieved as far as just spending time with people you love, and doing things like painting.

Wait a minute, yes, those are human heads.

Things like guitars and ukuleles, you should never part with it, because there will probably be good, healthy times spent, just playing and writing.

Gave her love away, put it in my pocket when it should of been framed!