Reznor: "I become irritated when I am being written off as aloof or stand-offish when I'm shy and don't know what to say."

Reznor: "In my life, I was always floating around the edge of the dark side and saying what if take it a little bit too far, and who says you have to stop there, and what's behind the next door. Maybe you gain a wisdom from examining those things. But after a while, you get too far down in the quicksand."

Reznor: "If you have something to say, then say it. Express yourself and break the rules."

Reznor: "I've learned to recognize, a lot of it forced through the process of recovery, that I'm wired wrong in certain ways; the chemical balance of my brain is off in terms of depression a little bit."

Reznor: "The Grammys make me hate music, and certainly everyone in the ass-licking music industry."

Reznor: "You can punch a wall or write a song. Just as painful either way, but you have something to show for it at the end of the day with a song."

Reznor: "I'm kind of forced to get out of what might feel more natural and comfortable."

Reznor: "One of my biggest heroes and people I was fortunate enough to be around is David Bowie. I look at his career, and he always had the balls to break things that weren't broken, to step away from something and try something new, at risk of failing."

Reznor: "I thought I'd reached the bottom a few times, but then I'd realize there was another 30 floors of despair below that."

Reznor: "I wanted to escape Small Town U.S.A. To dismiss the boundaries, to explore. My life experience came from watching movies, TV, and reading books and magazines. When your culture comes from watching TV everyday, you're bombarded with images of things that seem cool, places that seem interesting, people who have jobs and careers and opportunities."

Reznor: "Complacency is my enemy."

Reznor: "I think, fundamentally, music is something inherently people love and need and relate to, and a lot of what's out right now feels like McDonalds. It's quick-fix. You kind of have a stomachache afterwards."

Reznor: "This isn't meant to last. This is for right now."

Reznor: "The result of a public that has a very high consumption rate and turnover rate is people listen to more music but spend less time with individual bits of music. It's made me more likely to put things up quickly and treat it more like a magazine instead of a novel."

Reznor: "Books are better than movies because you design the set the way you want it to look."

Reznor: "To me, rock music was never meant to be safe. I think there needs to be an element of intrigue, mystery, subversiveness. Your parents should hate it."

Reznor: "I have been wildly enthused about gaming since I was younger, and a career path I chose not to go down but did really consider was getting into programming and game design."

Reznor: "My experience with being on a record label over the years has been when both of your agendas are in sync, and they're the same goal, it's great to have another army of people and resources and money. But most of the time, they're not the same. Their agenda is just simply to sell plastic discs at any cost, and yours is to preserve - at least in my case - your integrity, and hopefully sell some plastic discs, too."

Reznor: "Try to find the right balance of keeping things exciting and treating your audience with respect, and also treating yourself as an artist with respect."

Reznor: "My music has been a sort of personal therapy. It's got me out of tough times, it has been the friend that I needed, when I didn't have a friend there."

Reznor: "Jumping through any hoop or taking advantage of any desperate situation that comes up just to sell a product is harmful. It is."

Reznor: "I thought my goal in life was to be in a successful band, and I had got that, but I was as miserable as I had ever been, and I couldn't understand why that would be."

Reznor: "An integral part of any relationship is knowing that you could be killed in your sleep at any time."

Reznor: "There's something exciting and incredibly liberating for an artist to finish something Friday night and the world hears it Friday night instead of eight months later after marketing people and all those assholes get involved."