Ed Kowalczyk

There's a lot of spirituality and hope in our music that I think people are catching on to. It's not punk, it's not Green Day, not Offspring, not Soundgarden, not Stone Temple Pilots, not all of the other bands that are coming out.

Anarchy would be a world that nobody felt responsible for, that nobody felt any sort of love for. When there's real intelligence happening, when there's real love happening, there's a sense of responsibility: Hey, we've got to take care of this place and each other.

I believe that rock and roll can really make a huge impact on people's lives.

Critics are critics: their job is to find things wrong with people.

Ever since we started, we've been trying to give people music that is pop music where you could just get into the melody and get into the performance of the band and be quite satisfied.

We don't want Offspring-itis, Green Day-itis: you know, that thing where bands are all over the place at once, getting everything at once - major airplay on radio, major airplay on MTV.

We've never been satisfied with just making 'me' music. What we're doing is trying to go to a place of some reverence.

Lots of human-rights tragedies deserve concerts, but there's something extra with Tibet. It's a spiritual culture, a country rooted in humility and compassion. And among artists, there's a lot of Buddhists, people who want an alternative to basic Christianity, which doesn't offer much.

With 'Mental Jewelry,' we put a lot of pressure on ourselves to get something happening. I think we lost some of the personality in the music. 'Throwing Copper''s mission was to begin to get some of that back.

I was buddies with Dennis Rodman back in the day; actually, I am still buddies with him, and so I have gone to a lot of games and always enjoyed it.

When I was a kid, my aunt coached me a little bit for choir, and what she taught me actually stuck with me. She basically taught me to sing from my diaphragm and not from my throat.

Part of being an artist is that you want to express yourself to as many people as possible. But you don't want to exclude anyone.