“It’s just upsetting how the world is – the need and the necessity to override the value of life.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I bought a bar because we got banned from playing everywhere else. We were too nuts, and everyone was scared of us. It was Des Moines, Iowa, remember.”
― Shawn Crahan
“El Paso is the final Wild, Wild West city.”
― Shawn Crahan
“There’s a lot of different things that make me want to take photos. A lot of it is, for a long time I’ve been obsessed with the thought of time travel with my camera.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I don’t have time for heartache or problems, especially drama.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I couldn’t imagine being in Slipknot and not going to Peru or Argentina or Moscow or St. Petersburg.”
― Shawn Crahan
“We love everyone. We appreciate the support. It has helped us; it has been noted. It has been needed, and it just proves that Slipknot is not a band: we are a culture.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I wouldn’t disrespect myself or my art with any imitations.”
― Shawn Crahan
“What the world needs to know is that it’s okay to need help.”
― Shawn Crahan
“There is nothing perfect, no one can be perfect, and perfectionism is something you shouldn’t chase.”
― Shawn Crahan
“Slipknot started out of tragedy.”
― Shawn Crahan
“Believe me, I go and go, ’cause I know how short life is, and I know how very blessed all of us are to be here and how very short it is.”
― Shawn Crahan
“People are animals, man.”
― Shawn Crahan
“The goal every day of my life is to make some sort of artistic difference on a more profound level than just moshing.”
― Shawn Crahan
“This world is ugly, and it’s supposed to be, and it has to be in order for art to lead to grandness and beauty.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I don’t like people because I don’t trust them.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I’ve been obsessed with death since I was a little kid.”
― Shawn Crahan
“A lot of us in Slipknot, we get to go to wounded soldier hospitals where soldiers have lost their limbs. That’s surreal. It’s even more surreal to talk to them about your band. They’re talking to you about war and losing their limbs, and at same time, they’re talking about their favorite album, these kind of things.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I still live in Des Moines.”
― Shawn Crahan
“The people who you think are the most solid are often the most hurt.”
― Shawn Crahan
“As the world grows and technology grows, it’s getting harder to communicate and for kids to socialize.”
― Shawn Crahan
“To the general public, just remember the people around you. You might not know what they’re thinking, so it’s always nice to be checked in on and to check in on people.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I don’t wanna work with people who only want to make money.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I’m not gonna be like, ‘Farewell tour!’ then come back. Never say those words to fans – you have to come back if you say that.”
― Shawn Crahan
“Corey Taylor won’t be mad at me saying, but I didn’t think there’d be other bands. I thought we’d wear masks forever.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I jumped off my lift, smashed my knee pretty good – my meniscus and everything. So I had to have surgery.”
― Shawn Crahan
“The masks were more of a representation of what you wanted to present as yourself.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I love music, and I can’t imagine life without music.”
― Shawn Crahan
“The one thing that has always been there for me is music. Before I met my wife, there was music. If my wife were to pass or something, there would be music to help me through that.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I don’t usually let people see me cry.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I lost both my parents, and it wasn’t as hard as losing Paul, because you’ve got your whole life with them – you know it’s going to happen. With Paul being my best friend, I just didn’t see it coming.”
― Shawn Crahan
“Because of Iowa, I like being in a different state that doesn’t even have grass and think that I smell fresh-cut grass. It brings me home.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I won’t even let anyone in my house. I’m a private person.”
― Shawn Crahan
“My wife loves elephants and compares me to a big bull elephant.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I’m pretty infamous for opening my garage and standing in the middle of it and sneering.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I didn’t finish college, and I was very sad about that because I don’t think I gave myself a chance to learn, to prove to myself that I could learn.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I’ll die on the stage, man.”
― Shawn Crahan
“People always ask me: Is it the music? Is it the masks? No, it’s all of it. It’s Slipknot. It’s the optics, it’s the masks, it’s the music, it’s the performance, it’s the records.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I was born to make movies.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I work really hard to portray things that you’re not going to see at Walmart.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I don’t look at my work as being violent. ‘Officer Downe’ is more campy than anything. It’s a comic book, so it’s funny to me.”
― Shawn Crahan
“’American Psycho’ is violent. ‘Apocalypse Now’ is violent. ‘Officer Downe’ is a comic and not violent to me.”
― Shawn Crahan
“It’s very important every day that I get up and breathe, and I can say the word ‘Slipknot,’ and I still have friends that I do it with.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I’m not drawn to people that much unless there’s a really serious energy happening, but I’ll take a lot of pictures of trees, or I’m always staring at the ground. I’ll see an oil stain that looks like something out of ‘Lord of the Rings’ or something, and that’s what kind of calls to me… I’m drawn to that aspect of photography.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I forced myself to have a big family because I never had a big family.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I’ve been working on the way my originality, my body, my face, my original form is perceived by me.”
― Shawn Crahan
“Paul just had a way about him that was different. I was really attracted to his writing.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I liked playing drums in the band, but the truth is, I always knew they were going to call Joey to play drums.”
― Shawn Crahan
“We will never recreate ‘Iowa.’”
― Shawn Crahan
“I’m a pretty aggressive person, and I’m very saturated.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I can’t predict the future, nor will I. I’m not a fortune teller.”
― Shawn Crahan
“My art in my head just needs to come out for me – for my legacy and who I am.”
― Shawn Crahan
“My oldest boy, when I do skip, he’s gonna take over my slot. He was sitting on the stair in diapers wearing my mask with sticks while we were downstairs trying to learn how to be a band.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I’ve been inside the Anne Frank house. You’ve only read about Anne Frank in grade school. I’ve been in it. I’ve seen the diary. Things that teachers couldn’t teach you.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I’ve been to Dachau.”
― Shawn Crahan
“After I started Slipknot, I was very honored because I got in touch with the masses. But I was very down on myself because I dropped out of college, which meant I dropped out on myself.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I’ve been fortunate to have been in Paris a dozen times, where I’ve gone to the Louvre. I’m very big on Impressionistic paintings.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I can’t speak for anybody else but myself ’cause I usually get in trouble when I speak for other people, so I’ve learned my lesson not to do that, but for me, I’ve been known to pace for quite a while when I walk onstage, and that’s just because I’m becoming one with my shell.”
― Shawn Crahan
“One thing we’ve always wanted to do is just do things our way, and we’ve always talked about having our own festival.”
― Shawn Crahan
“Paul Gray – he believed in my art, and I believed in his music. Together, we decided to change the world, and that’s what we did.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I’m certainly interested in taking a photo with anyone who took time out of their busy schedule in life to say hello.”
― Shawn Crahan
“Either people are going to start getting us, or they’re not. And if they’re not, I want them to quit wasting my time. I just want people to really get into the band.”
― Shawn Crahan
“We want to push it. We feel we are the envelope.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I’m not a fan of the sound quality of our first album, because there’s a noise in my head.”
― Shawn Crahan
“No albums are better or worse than each other, and they’re all important to our legacy and our story.”
― Shawn Crahan
“Maybe I thought the movie business would be a little bit different than the rock n’ roll business, but, in fact, they’re the same animal, just packaged differently.”
― Shawn Crahan
“It’s very strange for me to do a comic book for my first movie. But I used to collect – and I love – comic books.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I get to be a kid forever.”
― Shawn Crahan
“You can look for something that’s equivalent to Slipknot, and you’re going to fail miserably.”
― Shawn Crahan
“We try to bring something different for every tour.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I’m in the greatest band in the world, period. End of story. We’re the best.”
― Shawn Crahan
“You’re either in music socially and culturally to get through life, or you’re not.”
― Shawn Crahan
“You can have a wife – you can have a child or children – and be a rock n’ roller.”
― Shawn Crahan
“Health is the most important thing you have on this planet if you’re gonna have a successful life.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I didn’t want to be in high school. I didn’t want to go to grade school. I wanted to learn rock n’ roll and paint pictures and throw pots and write haiku and study film.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I ask myself, does Slipknot want to play next to the Foo Fighters? The answer is no, because my kids don’t want me to do that.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I don’t need the new fan; I need the fan that has anxiety – parents are getting divorced, social problems, gender problems – I need them to come to the ultimate show, and they’re going to get that at Knotfest.”
― Shawn Crahan
“No, there’s other actor who could play The Clown in Slipknot.”
― Shawn Crahan
“Why should anybody see our faces? What have our clothes got to do with anything? So we got the masks and the overalls, and we set about developing the most insane live shows that anyone has ever seen.”
― Shawn Crahan
“What are Slipknot angry about? Everything, man!”
― Shawn Crahan
“I may have won the only important lotto ever, which is life, but I am still going to die. We all are.”
― Shawn Crahan
“Slipknot is about integrity and reality!”
― Shawn Crahan
“When I leave backstage, some of the fans ask if I’m a roadie, and I just tell them, ‘No, I’m the bus driver.’ And, of course, they believe it.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I decided that every year on my birthday, I’m going to release a new clown mask.”
― Shawn Crahan
“If I haven’t got someone to leave in five minutes for at least one of my films, then I’m not doing my job.”
― Shawn Crahan
“The Backstreet Boys are easy; they’re cream. And then here we are, this nine-piece metal militia.”
― Shawn Crahan
“Everybody wants to escape, but our escape is the real deal. If we’re scary, that’s because we’re taking you away from you being fed what you want to hear.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I have a lot of self-hatred and a lot of self-anger and a lot of things that I need to let go of.”
― Shawn Crahan
“It’s not about me. It’s about what I’m doing for kids. When I walk out onstage, there’s 15,000 kids that, to me, represent potential.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I can only be the madman that I’ve been so long.”
― Shawn Crahan
“There was no way I was gonna be in a band and show my face.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I really believe Slipknot’s rich with history and rich with things.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I want to go to colleges and give seminars. I want to sit down with kids in classrooms and have them challenge me.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I’ve got dreams now of reinventing ‘Hellraiser’ and just getting my head on anything I can get my hands on that maybe I would love. ‘Cause the possibilities are endless: I can make my own movies; I can make other people’s movies. But if someone had a ‘Hellraiser’ script and had funding, and I loved it, let’s go.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I think every song Slipknot has written is a greatest hit, but there are only four records.”
― Shawn Crahan
“We, as a band, have never decided to go away. We’ve never even talked about it. It’s not even a question.”
― Shawn Crahan
“We help kids and fans of all ages find their social scenes. Find their place. Find their demeanor.”
― Shawn Crahan
“In true Slipknot fashion, nothing we plan works out the way we want it.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I want to bring art into everything.”
― Shawn Crahan
“I would never, ever change the formula of what we would do, but what I want to do is go down somewhere really conceptual. Really artistic. Really theme-oriented. But I don’t want to push anything.”
― Shawn Crahan
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