Chester Bennington Quotes

Chester Bennington delivers candid, plain-spoken thoughts on music, travel and life.

48 quotes

1. I have quite a few theories on how companies can help their bands achieve greater success and stop just hemorrhaging money, but that's not part of the question. The reality is I have no idea.

2. Tattoos exude pain and pleasure all at the same time.

3. I don't think you should ever be ashamed or afraid of who you are, or anything that's happened to you. Life is good, man. You can either feel like a victim all the time, or you can get off your ass and do what you want to do.

4. You can't be afraid of people willing to hurt you, cause if you fear life, then you will never live

5. Cyclefly is one of my favorite bands and their new record is one of the best I've heard in a long time. If you don't like it, you suck!

6. Everyone Died At 4:20 Man (Few seconds later now laughing)Yeah time to die

7. We're shooting for the title of hardest-working band in america.

8. We're pretty straight guys: we're not boozers, we're not fucked up on drugs.

9. I always wanted to be a rock star. That was my childhood dream. That's what I told everybody I was going to be when I grew up.

10. My favorite jellybean is the pink one with the flavor inside.

11. We know who we are and we're not going to change that.

12. My summer holiday is going to happen this winter, and I'm going to Fiji. It's been me and my wife's dream to go there together for a long time, and we're actually going to make that happen some time very soon. It's got really beautiful weather all year round, and the beaches are amazing...you're basically off in the middle of the Pacific on an island. We're going to sit on the beach for two weeks and drink Tahitian liquor.

13. We're not the Grateful Dead or Pink Floyd. We're Linkin Park, and we cut all the fat out. We don't do guitar or drum solos.

14. I'm not a rapper, so I would be pretty bad at trying to rap in a band. Mike isn't naturally a singer, but the funny thing is he has a really good voice.

15. I see a lot of you fuckers crowd-surfing and moshing out there, we love that. Just show each other some respect. And there are some strong women here tonight. When they crowd-surf, that is not an invitation to grab their [breasts].

16. There's wacky girls all over the place that try to do weird things, but we don't pay attention to them. We just kind of do our own thing and hang out with the fans that are really important to us.

17. I'm just a regular guy, you know? There's no leotard and cape under my clothes. I shit, I piss, I drink too much and throw up, just like everybody else.

18. We'have took place in something very... devious, hahahaha!!!!

19. I'm disgusting, because I do that with my baggage too. All my bags specifically fit in a certain way really well I can't have disorganised bags! And when I go grocery shopping, I'm the same way; boxed items like detergents have to be separated from the food, and then all cans go together, all meats go together, and therefore it's easier to unload when you get home.

20. Not only that, but I can't sleep anywhere, but the fuckin' bus! I need to buy a bus and park it in front of my house, so that when I go home, at night when I go to bed, I just go to the bed. Or I need to install a half of a bus in my room, with bunks, so I can sleep in it. Not only is touring overglamorised, but the smell is completely under-rated. We got in a tour bus after a certain band had used it and we actually had to take the top of the bus off with a metal-melting machine and air it out, because it smelt like rotting flesh, BO and fromage! I'm not going to name the band' after mike said they live on a tour bus, becouse of the amount of time they spent touring.

21. We actually got smart and bought sticky velcro and put on either side of the candles, so they wouldn't roll around' after mike said how dangerous, but necessary it is to drive around with scented candles lit in the bus.

22. I meet a lot of people, dude, and I've never been star-struck, but I met Scott and I was like, 'Hi Scott - my name is durrrh' He was like, 'Are you alright, dude?' and I was like, 'Yeah - I mean, my name's Chester and I think you're great, I just wanted to tell you' I felt like a total schmuck! He was like, 'Well, are you in a band or what?' and I was like, 'Yeah, I'm in a band called Linkin Park' and he was like, 'You just played today, right?' and I went, 'Yeah' and he went, 'I've heard real cool things about you - good luck!' and I was like, 'Nargggh' And I mean, when I met him, I was in the middle of talking to the bass player from Green Day and these bands are like of the same calibre, but talking to the bass player from Green Day, I was totally comfortable - 'Yeah, dude, what's up, man? It's cool to meet you!' - and here comes Scott and I'm like, 'Urrrgh!' I don't know why - maybe I'm gay!

23. I'm sending him to Computers Anonymous!' after mike said that he and rob are realy into computers.

24. At ten o'clock every night, we'd hear (he bangs his fist against the wall) and that was our alarm, so we almost ended up naming the band 'Ten PM Stocker', 'cause we recorded on Stocker Street every night and at 10 PM, we had to stop

25. I was too nice. I didn't steal anything!

26. I wanna go to jail. To me It's fuckin cool to go to jail.

27. Well, we promised our fans that we'd put out records faster, and that's what we're doing. We figured out a way to condense our cycle, so to speak, by... continuing to write, trying to keep the creative ball rolling as often as possible.

28. Some kids are so depressed at home and with how people treat them in school that they cut themselves. This happens all over the world - kids who don't want to kill themselves, but nobody understands how much they hurt, so they cut themselves with razor blades.

29. We like playing smaller venues, but we know how many people want to come and see us so we don't ever want to stop anyone who wants to come to a show from coming.

30. The fans are the biggest reason we do what we do.

31. When life leaves us blind, love keeps us kind.

32. Asking someone to describe what something sounds like is like telling a blind person to guess what I look like.

33. Once we start hitting lyrical themes that can whack you from all these different perspectives, we know we're onto something special.

34. Success is nice, but it shouldn't be the only reason why you're a musician.

35. I have been able to tap into all the negative things that can happen to me throughout my life by numbing myself to the pain so to speak and kind of being able to vent it through my music.

36. We're not a political band, we're a socially-minded band.

37. We'd like to think that our music will always be bigger than any one of our individual personalities.

38. The rule in music land is never doody in the bus and never doody in the RV.

39. To pigeonhole a genre as being successful or unsuccessful is weird.

40. You think I'm stupid. Stay out of my way. You think I'm stupid.

41. As an artist, I want a reaction.

42. I'm strong on the outside, not all the way through. I've never been perfect, but neither have you.

43. I don't drink. I choose to be sober now. I have drunk over the last six years, but I just don't want to be that person anymore.

44. If fans come up to me, I talk to them.

45. There are always going to be encounters that you kind of wish went differently. But the average fan really isn't fanatical.

46. This is a business of love and labor.

47. It's the band that really counts and not our egos. Egos probably destroyed more bands than anything else did, and that's something we want to avoid at all costs. We want to give the audience something real, something spectacular, and if it would be about egos, it would hardly be worth their time.

48. I really wish Mike and Joe would stop drawing on me while I'm sleeping.