Cuomo: "I wouldn't say that I relax and enjoy anything. But I think my pessimism helps. I never really expect anything good to happen, so when it does, it's a nice surprise."

Cuomo: "I enjoy listening to the albums of my youth as much as ever."

Cuomo: "Most of the songs I write just very directly from my life. I don't have a big imagination. Whenever I tried to write from fantasy, it comes out sounding really fake."

Cuomo: "If enough people out there want a physical product, I'll be happy to make one. I'd say about 10,000 people is 'enough.'"

Cuomo: "People think I'm a freak or something, but I'm actually a really normal guy."

Cuomo: "I can't say I was consciously thinking of the big changes in the music business when I was writing the lyrics, but change, uncertainty, flux, impermanence - these are things I'm acutely aware of."

[On researching and organizing his own life]

Cuomo: "I’ve researched it so much and put it into a giant Excel spreadsheet."

Cuomo: "Your brain is always searching for reasons to doubt yourself; I'm pretty experienced with that."

[On many songs from the Black Album being 'quite breezy and psychedelic']

Cuomo: "It’s weird, I have a different idea of what 'black' means, because I think a lot of people were expecting, I don’t know, death metal. To me, this is what I was thinking of all along. It’s all very piano-based and experimental. It feels black. But I think most people will be surprised and think it should’ve been some other color."

[On the lyrics of his song, Piece of Cake]

Cuomo: “I would never say something like that — I’m the most straight-edge guy ever.”

Cuomo: "I always like balance. If I'm playing rock music all the time, chances are I'll start craving some lighter, poppier stuff, both to listen to and to play. I compare music to massage. If someone's been working on your back for a long time, you really want them to move down to your legs or something."

Cuomo: "I consider myself a normal person in extraordinary, abnormal circumstances. I think if anyone were in my position they would end up acting like I do."

Cuomo: "I've always seen myself as a grown-up. Since I was a little kid."

Cuomo: "The internet has not granted us more control in relation to the record company because we're still bound by an agreement with them not to release our music without their consent. But they generally let us do what we want, anyway, so it doesn't matter who's officially in control."

Cuomo: "The truth is, I hate to perform. I get such bad stage fright, it makes me physically ill."

Cuomo: "I just have this strong sense of nostalgia and romance for my history and upbringing. I felt like it was the story of a legend, so I’d study it and talk to people and take notes. I don’t feel that way anymore, but I used to."

Cuomo: "I love getting older, though. I just feel like I have more control over the universe -- or my small corner of it, at least."

Cuomo: "I just gotta keep reminding myself: Every time I do an interview or something, my volition really has to be just to serve, to help people. Not to feel like I'm important."

Cuomo: "Rock and Roll Over' was the first Kiss album I heard, but I was totally oblivious to their whole image and the makeup and all that. I was so out of touch with the wider world."

Cuomo: "With each step I take, I see that my ability to perform gets a little better. So until it starts getting worse, I'm going to keep moving forward."

Cuomo: "What I am best at is reading a book and then writing a critical essay."

Cuomo: "I think audiences sometimes mistakenly assume a quality performance comes from some great emotional disturbance rather than really intense concentration. Concentration and flow is what it's all about."

Cuomo: "Even at your best, the creative moments are still kind of fleeting."

Cuomo: "The bonds you make with those records when you're 14, 15 and 16, they'll never be broken, and nothing will ever be as strong as that."

Cuomo: "I feel so much feedback in a very profound way from the 10,000 people who are listening to me, watching me. I just get this deep sense of what works and what doesn't work."

Cuomo: "I don't ever want anyone to think that I'm being judgmental. I gotta do everything I can do to not be preachy."

Cuomo: "I like to get input from all different kinds of listeners, including the really conservative ones, and sometimes those listeners steer me in a direction that I haven't seen. But at the end of the day, my vote is always to go in the direction that makes me the most excited."

Cuomo: "I think there is a very subtle shift from the metal I grew up on to Weezer. I think the big shift was from a minor key to a major key. That made a huge difference in how it was perceived."

Cuomo: "I'm often troubled by a very strong instinct to share everything that's going on with me. I want to feel that connection, even with people I don't know. Then this other voice says, 'That's not prudent. People will use what you've said to hurt you.'"

Cuomo: "When 'Nevermind' came out, my roommate had the CD. At first, I actually thought, 'This is too polished and commercial.' It was a little off-putting. But then I was like, 'This is the best music ever.' It felt so close to what I wanted to do."

Cuomo: "Probably the most reliable comfort music for me over the years has been Bach."

Cuomo: "I can't imagine Weezer stopping. We just love doing what we're doing, and I think we'll keep going until we fall down dead. Even if the audience is abandoning us, I can't imagine doing anything else!"

Cuomo: "I really want to disappear, grow a beard, not talk to anyone, not make any friends... I just want to disappear and study."

Cuomo: "I do want to make music that people love, but I also want to make music that I love. I know I can't please everyone with anything I do, so I don't think too much about how other people are going to take things."

Cuomo: "I listen to music a lot on the treadmill - I would test 'Raditude' songs out on the treadmill."

Cuomo: "I'm constantly fighting with my manager to reduce the amount of time I have to spend on promotional activities, so I can get back in the studio and work on new music."

Cuomo: "I've always thought of myself as so unsuited to be a frontman."

Cuomo: "Rock guitar has been around for decades now, and there are so many strong traditions, and so much of it is just burned into my fingers. So, nine times out of 10, when I pick up the guitar to jam something, it sounds pretty cliche."

Cuomo: "I love writing songs. One of the toughest things is structure; it just works when you use verse, chorus, verse, chorus, bridge. And as soon as you become aware of that formula, you start to have a bad conscience when you write with that particular structure."

Cuomo: "I never feel guilty about liking music."

Cuomo: "It's great - that's the best part about being famous is that people want to get to know me. People come up to me and introduce themselves, and I make friends, and then I meet their friends. It seems like I have a very happy and comfortable social life, which is something I never had when I was younger."

Cuomo: "I just went to the hobby shop and got an electricity kit and a chemistry kit, and I'm really excited to do experiments like squeezing an egg into a bottle and growing crystals. I'm really getting into hobbies."

Cuomo: "I've sold two million records, I've toured around the world singing in front of thousands of people. And there's a girl sitting across from me in English 101, and I just look up at her every once in a while and put my head back down. I'm still a pathetic fool. No matter how many records I sell, I'm never going to be in Kiss."

Cuomo: "Nothing sounded as sincere as Nirvana's music. It took a long time for me to accept that any other music could be good in other ways. Including my own."

Cuomo: "It is cool to have a label head that is also a songwriter, in a band, and produces records."

Billboard: "Rivers Cuomo’s reverence for data is no secret. The Weezer frontman has long used algorithms to optimize his songwriting, funneling creativity through computer programs like the programming language Python."

Billboard: "Cuomo is known to carefully dismantle a hit song, examining each element to find out exactly what works, and apply that knowledge to his own writing process."

[On Cuomo's schedules]

Los Angeles Times: "On his computer screen was a program he’d devised to feed information pertinent to the proudly geeky rock band’s upcoming tour — drive times, bus calls, names of hotels — into a continuously updating schedule."