Top 22 Nine Inch Nails Quotes

I lived a fairly average, anonymous small-town life till I got the idea to do Nine Inch Nails. Then I locked myself in a studio for a year, and then got off the tour bus two years after that, and I didn’t know who I’d turned into.

It probably wasn’t until Nine Inch Nails played the first Lollapalooza that I actually went to a festival.

As long as it feels valid to me and feels sincere, I’ll do what I do under the moniker of Nine Inch Nails if it’s appropriate. I would hate to think I would ever be in a position where I’m faking it to get a paycheck.

As a producer, I’m trying to challenge myself to just make something that is of a professional quality – not necessarily pop music, but maybe in the sense that Nine Inch Nails is professional quality.

I love James Taylor, Jeff Buckley, Elliott Smith and Nine Inch Nails.

Nine Inch Nails’ sound is dominated by clanging synths and sardonic, shrieking vocals.

Though I still have no semblance of a life outside of Nine Inch Nails at the moment, I realize my goals have gone from getting a record deal or selling another record to being a better person, more well-rounded, having friends, having a relationship with somebody.

I don’t know, when I was a kid, when I would see shows that changed my life, I would go to see shows where there was my mother taking us to see classic rock concerts, like Zeppelin, or when I saw Pink Floyd or when I saw, you know, when I was a little older, and I saw Nine Inch Nails, and I saw The Cure.

A lot of what I’ve done as Nine Inch Nails has been governed by fear. I was trying to keep the songs in a framework that was tough, and I learnt a lot from Jesus and Mary Chain about how to bury nice pop songs in unlistenable noise – the idea being if you can get behind that wall, you find there’s a pearl inside.

Nine Inch Nails is like building an army to go conquer. We build it, then we play, and we have to play so much to validate building it, financially. It leads to getting burn-out because a tour that would be fun if it lasted three weeks has to last 15 weeks.

I like the idea of working in an album-sized chunk, you know, and I never looked at Nine Inch Nails as a project that would be a hit-driven, single-based kind of thing.

I’ve always liked the heavier stuff. I’ve always loved Tool and System of a Down, Korn and Nine Inch Nails.

Self-examination with a close-up mirror in an antiseptic environment is what Nine Inch Nails is based on.

Throughout my years in From First to Last, I was always dabbling and making electronic music on my own time. The first records I ever owned were crossover electronic rock, like Prodigy, Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails.

But the exposure we got by doing the stint with Nine Inch Nails brought us a lot of attention.

With Nine Inch Nails, it’s all Trent Reznor. So when we get a new record from Nine Inch Nails, it depends on what side of the bed Trent’s waking up on and what he’s been eating lately and what he’s been into. Because he’s preparing the whole meal.

I’m sure there is a group of people that assume Nine Inch Nails is just noise and chaos – or whatever it might be dismissed as, and sometimes is.

I love nineties stuff like Alice in Chains and Nine Inch Nails. It’d be my dream to have a Radiohead-themed episode of ‘Glee.’ I also love jazz greats like Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Herbie Hancock.

I like Nine Inch Nails, and I like hip-hop.

There’s always been an element of ‘right time, right place’ to Nine Inch Nails. When we stepped onstage at Woodstock ’94, I could sense it. I get goosebumps thinking about it now. Like, ‘I don’t know how we did this, but somehow we’ve touched a nerve.’

Nine Inch Nails was born out of Cleveland, Ohio, with me and a friend in a studio working on demos at night. Got a record deal with a small, little label, went on tour in a van, and a couple years later found that somehow we touched a nerve, and that first record resonated with a bunch of people.

In Nine Inch Nails, I’ve been the guy calling the shots since inception. I’d gotten used to that.