One really important thing is to have good friends and family that will be there to help you when the hard times come. Because bad times do come, for everyone, at some point. The good part is, the bad times don't last forever.

The survival of the fittest is the ageless law of nature, but the fittest are rarely the strong. The fittest are those endowed with the qualifications for adaptation, the ability to accept the inevitable and conform to the unavoidable, to harmonize with existing or changing conditions.

Music is the one universal language. It's your best friend when the chips are down, and it's better than any energy drink when you're feeling it.

The experience of playing music at a young age really opens up one's mind to different melody in life itself, literally - like, when you've even played a recorder, or whatever, it becomes a lot easier to hear the beauty in a bird's song, or the quiet tune in a gentle rustle of the wind.

I really think music in school is vital. Some pivotal moments in my life were my childhood scholastic experiences with music - teachers who found out I could sing, and encouraged me, or teachers who turned me on to music or bands I hadn't yet heard.

I've never lost track of what I stand for and what I believe in. I'm proud of that.

I think all human beings are at least a little bit Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde, and many of us are downright quadrophenic.

I actually think it's easier to be positive than negative, to be honest - it takes way more energy to stay mad at someone, for instance, than it does to say i forgive you and move on.

I do consider myself to be a positive person. I'd much rather have my energy be focused on trying to make the world a better place, than to be bitter or negative.

I listen to tons of hard rock and metal, like Iron Maiden, Motorhead, etc., but I also listen to Beethoven and Mozart, to Discharge and the Bad Brains, and to Charlie Parker and Duke Ellington. So I think there's merit to both the melodic punk and to the hardcore stuff too.