Patrick Stump Quotes

Every band always tells you to raise your middle finger.

When you have a bad day, a really bad day, try to treat the world better than it treated you.

No one's busy thinking bad things about you. They're all too busy thinking bad things about themselves.

Sometimes before it gets better, the darkness gets bigger. The person that you'd take a bullet for is behind the trigger.

Probably the most cold-hearted thing I ever did. There was this spider in my shower - and I'm usually very kind to all of the creatures of the world - and you feel very vulnerable when you're naked, and I didn't really want to be near this spider he was kinda big and gnarly looking. The only thing that I could reach in the shower was this hairspray. So I hairspray-ed this spider to death, which was awful. I felt like such a jerk. It was really, really harsh.

Whatever notoriety Fall Out Boy used to have prevents me from having the ability to start over from the bottom again.

I'm very much a night person. Morning is a thing I only experience because I have to.

You could be your own spotlight!

Fear is killing us, but true love can survive. If we cooperate, we can beat doubt. But first, rebuild trust. Take responsibility. Happiness is still free, though not always apparent when it's right in front of us. So keep calm, it's gonna get better.

Good music is good music, regardless of where it comes from. I think that's a really important thing to carry with you.

When you make art, you get really invested in it. When art happens by accident and you were just along for the ride? It's way more fun.

Why do we make records? Because we want to say something. Why are you in art? Because you want to say something. The second you don't have anything to say, you stop making art - you might start making product. And I'm interested in being an artist.

Speed is absolutely key to creativity. The more time it takes to create something, the less likely you are to create something.

I don't mind critics. I mean, I wrote for Rolling Stone for a hot minute. I like criticism. I enjoy criticism. The thing I don't like is cruelty for cruelty's sake. You don't have to be a jerk to say something negative. You can say something in the negative sense and have class.

My bucket list is pretty much checked off. But oh, we should play in space! Let's do that. We'll play in space, up on a satellite somewhere.

Quiet IS the new loud.

Self-deprecating or arrogant, it's all selfish. Hard as it is, life's better when you spend more time on the rest of the world

I'm good with telling people what I think, too, but I don't know why people are so content to treat each other poorly.

I always think about opportunity and how you regret the things you don't do.

I don't mind if someone thinks I'm a sell out. I go to bed happy knowing I do what I do and I'm not doing anything for reasons of money, and if I were trying to pick up chicks, I'm doing a horrible job. And if I wanted to drive awesome cars, I'm doing a really bad job there too.

In Fall Out Boy, I noticed that I wasn't putting all that much soul into it. It was just kind of screaming, I guess. I was just dying to get out of there!

I always thought 'Stump' was kind of like, you dropped something on your foot. It's not the most exotic rock-star name.

I definitely love kimchi. The biggest influence that eating so much Korean food growing up had on me was that I have no limit for spiciness. The hotter the better.

I still have access to enough money to live on in order to avoid bankruptcy for at least a few years as long as I stick to my budget Still, there's no amount of money in the world that makes one feel content with having no self respect. There's no amount of money that makes you feel better when people think of you as a joke or a hack or a failure or ugly or stupid or morally empty.

There are some bands for whom that works very well and it's no disrespect to them because I'm sure there's something honest and natural about it, but for us I feel like it would be dishonest and kinda disrespectful to that artwork to do that. To be like: "Okay, we're going to go back and only play these songs, even though we have an hour to an hour and a half set and we gotta play more songs, but we'll skimp you on your extra half hour." That's just silly to me.

I've learned a lot about things because of the Internet. I'm happy with it, but it's a long road for me. I'm still definitely a little anti.

Good! Hang in there! It's normal! [Low self-esteem] Often it's a sign of intelligence (but don't let that go to your head haha)

Stray thought for the day: Putting boundaries on how punk should sound/look is the least punk rock thing one can do. Be yourself=Very punk.

I love playing our older songs along with newer ones but If all I have is my old stuff, I quit. Creating is more rewarding.

I think writing is a much more personal thing.

There are two types of bands - there are the ones that are basically solo projects anyways, where there's clearly the one guy who's driving the ship and everyone else is just along for the ride. And then there was my band, where you have a few very disparate-taste, creative people who kind of meet in the middle somewhere.

I was going to record a solo album when I was 15 on a four-track. I started working on it, but then Fall Out Boy happened. The band was awesome and took me in a totally different direction. I don't regret it at all, but the band delayed the record I had been planning.

Any art that you are playing based on effort, loses something. I think that most of the time it should be something that happens, and you are inspired, and you just feel and follow your instincts. The best chiseled sculptures happen when the sculptor looks at the stone and says "I saw this sculpture in the stone, and I had to get it out." It's not contrived.

I was talking to my grandpa last Thanksgiving. He pulled me aside and was like, "This Thanksgiving is the 150th for the Vaughn family in Chicago." I was like, "Cool, whatever," but I think when you have a culture like that, you should have a real appreciation for it. My family's been there forever and I don't want to leave.

I love Korean food, and it's kind of like home to me. The area that I grew up in outside Chicago, Glenview, is heavily Korean. A lot of my friends growing up were Korean and when I would eat dinner at their houses, their parents wouldn't tell me the names of the dishes because I would butcher the language.

There's a certain fear of simplicity. I think that's the thing when you're younger as an artist you get this idea in your head that complexity equals quality. The more notes you're playing, the better.

For some people, home is family and their mom's house or their girl or whatever, and I have those experiences as well, but the biggest thing for me is Chicago. I don't know how to explain it.

I write really scathing, angry stuff when I'm in a better mood, and then uplifting and happy stuff when I'm at the absolute bottom.

Steven Tyler isn't in Aerosmith anymore, but his gravestone will probably say something about Aerosmith.

I don't like to Google myself. I try and avoid it whenever I can.

The song that's affected me the most profoundly is probably Michael Jackson's 'Thriller,' or, more specifically, the couple seconds of instrumental break before Vincent Price starts 'rapping.'

Eh. Hipster's not really a thing anymore. Plus, hipster or out of touch old dude? Same uniform really.

All of the agreed-upon pariahs throughout pop-culture history put their identities into the thing we decry. And yet we derive our own identities from the act of hating. We connect on the things we are disappointed in. Some may argue that nothing in history gathers a crowd like complaining about Lady Gaga's meat dress.

I'd hate wearing suits every day.

I am genuinely into soul, R&B and hip hop - all these genres that get slapped under the 'soul' genre. That spoke to me more than it did to my punk-rock friends. And punk spoke more to me than it did to my soul friends. I basically didn't fit comfortably in either world.

In reply to 'how do I flirt with people?': Just be yourself and not want anything out of anybody. Desire is the killer of all smoothness.

When you're No. 1 or No. 300, you still get to play and write the songs.

We got nominated for a Grammy, that was really crazy, and I was sitting there and Stevie Wonder was on stage and I remember thinking "Wow, I really need to take [singing] more seriously!"

When you're a little kid, you just like music that makes you happy and is fun. As you get older, you reach college or your 20s and you decide that music should be challenging and all art should be smart. So you start to think it makes you like high art more to put down things you consider low art. I don't even think things are low art.

I'm very curious about David Bowie's new record [2016]. I'm very, very... I'm just incredibly curious, I want to see what's happening with that. I don't really know who else is putting out records, we've had our heads buried working on ours. I haven't really been paying much attention lately.