The Misantrophe

“We were always about the rebellion at the heart of America not only because we lived that way but also because rock-and-roll has always been salvation for horny, aggressive teenagers as much as it's always been nothing but a fucking racket to their parents.”
― Tommy Lee, Tommyland

“[...] I saw the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show. As I watched them singing, it hit me: This is my ticket out. Here was the vehicle I could use to rise out of misery, to become famous, to be looked up to, to be liked, to be admired, to be envied.”
― Paul Stanley, Face the Music: A Life Exposed

“We all want expanded consciousness and bliss. It's a natural, human desire. And a lot of people look for it in drugs. But the problem is that the body, the physiology, takes a hard hit on drugs. Drugs injure the nervous system, so they just make it harder to get those experiences on your own.
I have smoked marijuana, but I no longer do. I went to art school in the 1960s, so you can imagine what was going on. Yet my friends were the ones who said, "No, no, no, David, don't you take those drugs." I was pretty lucky.
Besides, far more profound experiences are available naturally. When your consciousness stars expanding, those experiences are there. All those things can be seen. It's just a matter of expanding that ball of consciousness. And the ball of consciousness can expand to be infinite and unbounded. It's totality. You can have totality. So all those experiences are there for you, without the side effects of drugs.”
― David Lynch, Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity

“One thing I had figured out by then was that talent, like everything else, was just a starting point. What counted was what you did with it. I knew I wasn't the most talented guitar player or the best singer or the best writer, but I could do all of those things, and I had a complete vision of what it was going to take to succeed---a vision that included working, working, working.”
― Paul Stanley, Face the Music: A Life Exposed