"I was really bad at sports. So it was just to have people to hang out with. You know, all the other losers in the neighborhood that were lousy at sports, we hung around together and we played music." John, Guild Gallery July-Dec 1999 on his motivation as a guitarist

"I want to hear somebody playing from their heart. I don't care how many notes they can play, you know, or what their technique is. I just want to hear them mean something that they're saying to me." John, Guild Gallery July-Dec 1999

"A rock band. A rock band in 1999." John on TRL talking about the Foo Fighters

"If you don't like my music, f*** off." John on VH1's Behind the Music

"We never made a good video til we met Nancy." John on director Nancy Bardawil

"I just kept saying to myself, 'Don't be a sissy in front of all these people, don't be a sissy in front of all these people. Get up there and do it quick!'" John on being up high on a platform for parts of the Black Balloon video

"I believe in anything that causes mass hysteria in children." Robby on Pokemon

"We had an amazing softball game though." Mike on TRL about SC softball game with Tonic - one of like 2 things I've ever heard him say!!

"Probably, uh, sitting there drinking" John on what they were going to do on the FLY2K Party Plane

"98 Degrees is going to teach me how to dance." John on TRL about the FLY2K party plane

"You gave us 2 [hats] and our drummer's not getting one. Cuz he's a swagwhore. Anything he gets for free, he just takes everything and there's nothing left for us." John on The Daily Show

"We were just over at MTV and like we raided, we raided the cupboards." John on the Daily Show as he proceeds to empty his pockets of all this junk food!

"The thong was really full." John on "Toucan Sam" from the Howard Stern Gay Dance Party

"Dear VH1: in regards to your new show, the List, I think it f***ing sucks. F*** you, f*** the host, and especially f*** the stupid choices those imbecile panelists come up with. My f***ing dog could come up with better choices." John reading a "letter" for his VH1 List commercial

"Back in 5th grade he was a bookworm with a serious shy streak, but look closely and you'll see all the makings of a rockstar." About John on Before They Were RockStars

"Don't ever commit yourself to something you think is really, really funny. Cuz, uh, it will come back and haunt you." Robby on their name

"Boy you guys really dig up the shit on everybody." John in a VH1 interview

"What is outside your sphere of influence, outside your sphere of control, what you don't have control over you just have to forget about. That's just the way it is." John on Biorhythm

"I like where I am. I like what I'm doing ya know. I love the people around me. I mean I'm a prick sometimes, but . . . but besides that. I'm working on that." John on Biorhythm

"Look at that Goo Goo Dolls song from City of Angels. In and of itself it wouldn't have touched people the way it did but linked to a movie and in the subconscious memory that people have after they see the movie, it was a huge success." MTV's 9 Days That Rocked the 90's

"You know you see yourself on a chart next to Whitney Houston, I always say to myself, "well ya know it's a nice neighborhood, I'm just driving through, but we don't live here." John on 9 Days That Rocked the 90's about "Iris"

"The last time I saw you, the last time I saw you was outside of Ralph's in Los Angeles. You were grocery shopping" Jon Stewart "Yes I was grocery shopping."JR "Would you like to tell the kids what your groceries were?"JS "A big bottle of Jack Daniels, a bag of ice, and some ginger ale . . . and I saw you and, and it was like 'What are you going to a party?' and I'm like 'No I'm just going back to my room and have a few drinks.' The Daily Show

"The film company made John re-record 'Iris' without the band for the film's score. The Goo Goos didn't boo-hoo, but they 'deliberately wasted'the company's money. John spent two days in the studio drinking champagne and 'screwing up on purpose.'" Iris Pop-Up Video

"I'm amazed that I can sit down, put a guitar in my hands and start playing kind of free style, and it will be four hours later and it will feel like it's been five minutes," he says. "I think that adds depth to your being, when something in your life can do that for you." John

If you can find something that doesn't destroy you, but deepens your character, you're really lucky." John

"I write music for real people. I'm a human being. I experience the same everyday stuff everybody else does, and it affects me. And I just write about what I feel most of the time. I don't hear a lot of music like ours. We really play hard. We have a long history, which helps, and I think what we do is a legitimate, valid, thing. We're really having a great time." John

"That's something that every single person on this earth, it's their right to do. Whether they do it and millions of people hear it, or nobody but yourself, it's equally valid." John on being able to express himself through music

"So many times I was ready to walk away, then some sort of serendipitous event brings me back. It's beautiful, like I was meant to do this." John.
"Buffalo is a big city and a small town at the same time. There are neighborhoods and families, that kind of thing. There's always a bit of optimism in Buffalo. It's a city of survivors." John

"I think we are one of the only bands on pop radio right now that wasn't built in a laboratory. We are a real band. We've been around a long time writing and singing our own music. There's nothing phony about this." John

"I want to go as far as I can as a songwriter. That's what I really am." John

"I'm a bad rock star, but a good songwriter." John

"Our technical prowess is, like, nil as players. I mean, we're competent, but I don't think the show suffers if I jump up on the drum riser, completely miss a guitar solo, jump into the audience and play with the guitar out of tune for three songs­­I don't care. 'Cause it's the energy of the show that's most important, and to provoke the energy in the room to get that high, and then get spit back up onto the stage by a crowd of people, and then just lay back and watch them go fuckin' nuts on each other and be completely entertained by the people that come to see us, that's the best. If the mood and the energy is in the room, it doesn't matter how technically great you play the songs." John in ABNG days

"The moment when it comes, I like to compare it to, like, the catharsis of a good dump after being constipated for a few weeks." John on getting an idea for a song

"This was a tough record to write my songs on (ABNG); this time it was really tough for me. And I really didn't wanna have to put the mask on. I wanted to take a look in the darker corner and expose that part. Generally my life's pretty good, but it's kinda weird to see some of the things that go on around you. I wanted to get out of my own head and get into someone else's this time." John

John on Lou Giordano: "He's technically a very meticulous person as far as timing and being in key when you're singing. He's a ball-buster about that stuff. And when you're writing lyrics, he'd say, 'Would you say that in real life?' I'd go, 'If I would say that in real life, I wouldn't be writing a song, would I? I'd be saying it to somebody.' And then he'd go, 'Well, I'm not sure that makes any sense. "An albino, a mulatto, a mosquito, my libido," what does that mean? You wanna be a mook? Be a mook."

"[Flat Top is] about how we live in a society where it's harder and harder to get an eduction, to get a job, to be a human, and we constantly have the idiot box in front of us bombarding us with what we're s'posed to be, what we're s'posed to have. And that means that the things that we're supposed to be and have are continuously put out of our reach." John

"It seems as though there's a process going on in this country of de-educating people. That there's war being waged on one class of our society, and the thing that pisses me off the most is the things that empower the common man are the things that are always taken away when there's a budget gap to fill. Where the fuck are our priorities? It seems like the value of destroying human life is far more important than the value of enhancing it, of enriching it." John

It's so hard to be a kid now. Because time and time again, everything that seems to be something that you can look to for faith becomes exposed as a fraud. But even though there isn't as much opportunity for financial success, there's other things in life that are far more valuable." John

"The kids that I meet when we go out and play are the greatest people. When I was 16 years old, I was out takin' dope, and bangin' every girl I could, and it's just not like that anymore. Every kid I meet is such a good person, and they live their life in earnest. Even though there's not financial security, there can be ethical security, and you can elevate yourself as a person and do as much as you can for the people around you." John

"It's like, things are fucked, but we're all in this together, so let's try and make the best of it." John
About We Are the Normal:" A lot of time was spent on that song, and it was never put to us that that song would ever be a single, really. As a matter of fact, for three months we screamed and yelled and stomped our feet, and it came down to some people saying, 'We know better than you. Sorry.' So we backed off and the attitude got was sort of shitty, and we ended up coming out of the box with a song that was not representative." John

"We're sort of like bottom feeders. We get to hang out down here and do whatever the hell we want. That's cool."John

"The fact that our last record (SSCW)didn't sell huge amounts never led me to believe that record was any less good. There were always factors involved that we thought weren't our fault or that could've happened in different ways to make each record bigger than it actually was. We've developed a confidence in what we do which has nothing to do with selling records, really." Robby

"It's enough to know I did my best and there was no more. The rest of the world be damned. It's process-oriented too. It's really important to be in love with the fact of getting up every day, and it doesn't matter what the outcome is. That's what makes it special. That's success." John