Mark Rice > Mark's Quotes

“I was ten when I heard the music that ended the first phase of my life and cast me hurtling towards a new horizon. Drenched to the skin, I stood on Dunoon’s pier peering seawards through diagonal rain, looking for the ferry that would take me home. There, on the everwet west coast of Scotland, I heard it: like sonic scalpels, the sounds of electric guitars sliced through the dreich weather. My body hairs pricked up like antennae. To my young ears these amplified guitars sounded angelic, for surely no man-made instrument could produce that tone. The singer couldn't be human. His voice was too clean, too pure, too resonant, as though a robot larynx were piping words through vocal chords of polished silver. The overall effect was intoxicating - a storm of drums, earthquake bass, razor-sharp guitar riffs, and soaring vocals of astonishing clarity. I knew that I was hearing the future.”
― Mark Rice, Metallic Dreams

“I realized that the good stories were affecting the organs of my body in various ways, and the really good ones were stimulating more than one organ. An effective story grabs your gut, tightens your throat, makes your heart race and your lungs pump, brings tears to your eyes or an explosion of laughter to your lips.”
― Christopher Vogler, The Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers

“Dying is the fastest route to fame for an aspiring rock star. The dead man’s melodies become profound, acquiring mystery and rising into a realm beyond the reach of human criticism. In the stopping of a heartbeat, the rocker is transformed from decadent hedonist into misunderstood genius. Aye, death and musical stardom go together like Scotland and rain.”
― Mark Rice, Metallic Dreams

“You can't lie to your soul.”
― Irvine Welsh, Porno

“Things began to go wrong when I was seventeen. My band’s twenty-year-old lead guitarist earned seven years in jail for a drug-fuelled spree of violence. The other band members were quick to let go of their musical dreams, but I never did. They did the ‘mature’ thing: after writing off the band as a teenage fantasy, they got real jobs and made some money. They called it growing up. I called it giving up.”
― Mark Rice, Metallic Dreams

“In and of itself, nothing really matters. What matters is that nothing is ever in and of itself.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto

“I lay in bed that night, a first-time drunkard at seven years of age, pondering the punishment I knew would arrive on callused palms. In the forest, as if sensing my plight, wolves howled nocturnal laments. The magnificent lunar lullabies of my lupine brethren wooed me into a deep and cleansing sleep.”
― Mark Rice, Metallic Dreams

“For me starting the day without a pot of tea would be a day forever out of kilter.”
― Bill Drummond, $20,000: A Book

“The Devil has all the best tunes? My arse! Metalville just got a new sheriff.”
― Mark Rice, Metallic Dreams

“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.”
― Virginia Woolf

“His eyes are wild, psychotic slits that bat-dance in your soul looking for good things to crush or bad elements to identify with.”
― Irvine Welsh

“Ye see, Rab, it's due to the way we feel about our arseholes. We now believe, as a species, if our soul is located anywhere in our bodies, it's up our arses. That's where it all goes. It makes sense. That's why we're obsessed with anal jokes, anal sex, anal hobbies...the arsehole - not the brain, not space - is the last frontier. That's what makes us revolutionaries.”
― Irvine Welsh, Porno

“Selling my soul would be a lot easier if I could just find it.”
― Nikki Sixx, The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star

“My hair had grown out long and shaggy—not in that sexy-young-rock-star kind of way but in that time-to-take-Rover-to-the-groomer kind of way.”
― Jim Butcher, White Night

“Anything worth doing, is worth overdoing.”
― Nikki Sixx, The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star

“You don't shit where you eat, and you don't try to fuck your bandmate's fiancée. Especially when your bandmate is your boss.”
― Dave Mustaine, Mustaine: A Heavy Metal Memoir

“What makes big boobs and perkiness so attractive to boys? I mean, really. Two round, mounds of fat and a fake smile. Yeah, winning attributes.”
― Gena Showalter, Oh My Goth

“RJD was pretty much heavy metal personified, a tiny 5-foot-4-inch sorcerer with a mangy mane, demonic eyes and sly grin, all coupled to a simply huge, operatic voice, a diminutive powerhouse who prowled the stage like a feline elf and who was, it turns out, also finely intelligent and well spoken, an actual gentleman in a genre known all too well for its bombastic, monosyllabic doltbuckets. A rare thing indeed.”
― Mark Morford

“If there is a true measure of a person's soul, if there is a single gauge of real divinity, of how beautifully a fellow human honors this life, has genuine spiritual fire and is full of honest love and compassion, it has to be right there, in the eyes.

The Dalai Lama's eyes sparkle and dance with laughter and unbridled love. The Pope's eyes are dark and glazed, bleak as obsidian marbles. Pat Robertson's eyes are rheumy and hollow, like tiny potholes of old wax. Goldman Sachs cretins, well, they don't use their own eyes at all; they just steal someone else's.”
― Mark Morford

“The lions of hard rock, guys like Robert Plant, Roger Daltrey, Brian Johnson, Rob Halford, these monsters feel completely timeless, iconic, eternal. They simply shall not, will not, do not die. It's almost impossible to imagine a musical world without Robert Plant. No metal fan of any stripe can imagine a day when, say, Iron Maiden shuts it all down because Bruce Dickinson turned 85 and suddenly can't remember the lyrics to "Hallowed Be Thy Name." Metal revels in the raw energy and unchecked phantasmagorical ridiculousness of youth. It is all fire and testosterone and rebellious fantasy. It doesn't go well with reality.

So it is for hard rock and a guy like Dio, an elfin titan with an undying love for lasers and sorcery, dragons and kings. The man wrote some terribly corny metal songs, but he sang every one with a ferocity and love and total honesty. He also wrote some of the finest hard rock melodies of all time, sang them with a precision and love unmatched by any hard rock singer since. It's a rare thing to give metal some heartfelt props. It is time. Raise your devil horns and salute.”
― Mark Morford

“All war will end when women cease to find men in uniforms attractive - discuss.”
― Bill Drummond, $20,000: A Book

“He stood a few meters from the step and spoke with great conviction, great joy.
"Alles ist Scheisse," he announced.
All is shit.”
― Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

“This was the plan: we would take a holy and sacred picture of the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, Elvis Presley, to the very summit of the earth; once there, we would place it with sincere reverence amongst the chimerical shimmering palaces of ice and snow and then (accompanied by some weird Zen magic) we would light joss sticks, dance about making screechy kung-fu noises, get off our faces, and that would be it: Planet Earth saved. Simple.”
― Mark Manning, Bad Wisdom

“Witches never existed, except in people’s minds. All there was in the olden days was women and some men who believed in herbal cures and in folklore and in the wish to fly. Witches? We’re all witches in one way or another. Witches was the invention of mankind, son. We’re all witches beneath the skin.”
― Ian Rankin, The Flood

“Protect art. It is the antidote to the innate barbarism of the human race.”
― Peter Adolphsen, The Brummstein

“Only by examining our personal biases can we grow as artists; only by cultivating empathy can we grow as people.”
― Jen Knox, Chaos Magic

“An intelligent person can rationalize anything; a wise person doesn't try.”
― Jen Knox, Chaos Magic

“Billy Rankin is a true Glasgow rock legend. He has everything going for him: he's a brilliant guitarist, he writes killer songs, he's worked with the best, toured the world and he is one handsome-looking chap. I know all of this because Billy told me.”
― Robert Fields, Minstrels, Poets and Vagabonds: A History of Rock Music in Glasgow

“Weren't we all crazy in our sleep? What was sleep, after all, but the process by which we dumped our insanity into a dark subconscious pit and came out on the other side ready to eat cereal instead of our neighbor's children?”
― Jeff Lindsay, Darkly Dreaming Dexter

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, Profiles of the Future: An Inquiry into the Limits of the Possible