Quote

I feel sorry for these kids in bands. Everything is so disposable nowadays. These kids don't even get 15 minutes of fame, it's like a minute and a half.

Everyone's talking about how no one is buying records any more, but to me it's quite logical. In the 1990s, music was so hardcore-marketed to a certain group of people that I think a lot of kids felt taken advantage of.

Lyric writing is an interesting process in Sonic Youth. There's three people writing now, and we've all had a lot of interest and involvement with expression through words.

When rock came along the lyrics and melodies became less important and it bothered me to think that perhaps they might not regain the value they have to music - they are music.

That's what so sad about a lot of modern music, in my opinion, so many young bands never stay around long enough to fulfill their ultimate promise. They only get halfway there or a quarter of the way there.

Lyrics have become so dumbed down nowadays. People don't want to have to think about lyrics anymore, they just want to be told something. Until these great things started happening with us, I'd really given up on reaching people like that.

When there are no lyrics, people can picture what they want. It's a reflection of where they are in their lives. Music becomes a mirror.

I don't think having a My Chemical Romance action figure will make a kid start his own band, I like to think it will make him save children from a burning building.

Kids just want to have one song. They don't care about a body of work; they don't even care about a whole album - they just want whatever's hot right now. They download that song, and that's it.