Top 40 Chris Cornell Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Be yourself is all that you can do.”

— Chris Cornell

Featured in: Music Quotes, Self-Realization Quotes, Personality Quotes, Identity Quotes, Being Yourself Quotes

2. “Everybody is influenced by someone.”

— Chris Cornell

3. “She gives the night its dreams.”

— Chris Cornell

Featured in: Quotes About Night

4. “People don’t realize how much fun it is to be depressed.”

— Chris Cornell

Featured in: Fun Quotes

5. “The words you say never live up to the words in your head.”

— Chris Cornell

6. “I used to work in jobs I hated because I needed the money to buy a guitar. I know what it feels like to be depressed. On the other hand, I also know what it feels like to have money, to be successful, to be independent, but I can tell you that money and success never solve your problems.”

— Chris Cornell

7. “And if you don’t believe the sun will rise, stand alone and greet the coming night in the last remaining light.”

— Chris Cornell

8. “I’m looking California and feeling Minnesota.”

— Chris Cornell

9. “Children should always feel like the adults are living in this world to nurture them, to take care of them, to protect them from any bad thing that might come.”

— Chris Cornell

10. “I’m not usually in a talkative mode.”

— Chris Cornell

11. “I’m not a lyric writer to make statements. What I enjoy doing is making paintings with lyrics, creating colorful images. I think that’s more what entertainment and music should be.”

— Chris Cornell

12. “Once you sit in front of people and start playing songs, it’s all on you. No matter what happens, it’s entirely your responsibility the entire time. I like that intensity.”

— Chris Cornell

13. “Maybe sincerity is the new punk. But to me, I think I have to connect with something emotionally, on some level, or I don’t care about it. And if I don’t care about it, then I don’t think anyone listening to it will, either.”

— Chris Cornell

14. “To me, music shouldn’t be ego-driven. When you go out on stage and play songs, it is. But when you’re sitting in a room, writing songs, it’s a completely different process. It’s a completely different place. It’s a creative place, a musical place. It has nothing to do with who likes what.”

— Chris Cornell

15. “There’s something about losing friends, particularly young people, where it’s not something that you get over. I don’t believe there’s a healing process.”

— Chris Cornell

16. “If you are trying to think ahead musically, it is not going to help you. It is better to ignore what is happening melodically and just look at the little dots coming at you and the corresponding colors and try to do it at the right time.”

— Chris Cornell

17. “Led Zeppelin is just a bunch of stupid idiots who wrote cool riffs.”

— Chris Cornell

18. “I don’t really go mountain biking per se, like a proper sport.”

— Chris Cornell

19. “I’ve had a long career and I want to continue to have a long career. The way to do that is not to go away.”

— Chris Cornell

20. “Sometimes, if a song is written, in essence, to be that stripped down, it’s very touchy when you start adding things, because even the smallest thing can have a huge impact. Somebody has to make the decision that there’s a better song in there if there’s less.”

— Chris Cornell

21. “It’s great when you play to an audience that knows the words to all your songs, and sings them back to you.”

— Chris Cornell

22. “What makes that song, I think, is how stark it is.”

— Chris Cornell

23. “I never wrote music or arranged songs or lyrics when I was under the influence of anything but coffee. That’s not gone away.”

— Chris Cornell

24. “I can go from one extreme to another, from playing at the Sydney Opera House on the Songbook tour to shows with Soundgarden at Voodoo Fest, all in a week.”

— Chris Cornell

25. “Friends of mine that are from here or that have spent time here have told me about Israel and how warm the people are and that I should someday come here.”

— Chris Cornell

26. “Most frontmen are not born hams like David Lee Roth. We’re more like Joey Ramone: awkward geeks who somehow find our place in the world on the stage.”

— Chris Cornell

27. “My first favorite band that made music important to me was the Beatles. I was a little kid. I didn’t know who was singing what song or who wrote what song.”

— Chris Cornell

28. “I don’t get in there and create a character. It’s more of a voice that I hear living inside the music.”

— Chris Cornell

29. “An acoustic show is all about you, and any little nuance or mistake is amplified.”

— Chris Cornell

30. “In the United States, workouts tend to focus on body image and how you look. For me, it’s really all about the brain.”

— Chris Cornell

31. “Due to irresolvable personality conflicts as well as musical differences, I am permanently leaving the band Audioslave. I wish the other three members nothing but the best in all of their future endeavours.”

— Chris Cornell

32. “What do you think Jesus would twitter, ‘Let he who is without sin cast the first stone’ or ‘Has anyone seen Judas? He was here a minute ago.’”

— Chris Cornell

33. “At the end of the day it’s the fans who make you who you are.”

— Chris Cornell

34. “I play Texas Hold’em on my Blackberry. I have amassed a fortune on that. I have almost 30 million dollars from playing. It is unreal.”

— Chris Cornell

35. “I had to teach myself to let go of the conventional rock way of playing guitar and singing. Some things you wouldn’t expect to work, did and some things won’t ever work.”

— Chris Cornell

36. “A true musician, like Johnny Cash, should be able to walk into a room with nothing but an instrument and capture people’s attention for two hours.”

— Chris Cornell

37. “I think it’s important for fans to know that but if I’m doing something that inspires me musically then I think it will inspire someone else too.”

— Chris Cornell

38. “Radio and TV can still push a band, but things need to be shaken up. There is the Internet, but mostly what I see there is little kids on YouTube playing music.”

— Chris Cornell

39. “I think that one of the main privileges of what I do, which I am just starting to learn, is to have the ability to travel all over the world and experience different cultures.”

— Chris Cornell

40. “If I’m going to go out to be a solo artist, it’s because I want to do something different without having to wait on someone else’s schedule or hobbies or be limited by other people’s prejudices. I’d be kind of stupid not to exercise that.”

— Chris Cornell

41. “If I had a musical identity that was definable then it would be time to get into painting or something else. Race car driving.”

— Chris Cornell

42. “I got in touch with the creative process between the age of 14 and 16, mainly because I was alone so much.”

— Chris Cornell

43. “I feel like you’re not a real musician or entertainer if you can’t go into a room, pick up an instrument and entertain people.”

— Chris Cornell

44. “There wasn’t a key moment when I knew I wanted to quit.”

— Chris Cornell

45. “My brother brought home ‘At San Quentin’ when I was about 7, and we played it over and over again.”

— Chris Cornell

46. “I actually think to some degree that people are down for longer shows with an acoustic show.”

— Chris Cornell

47. “All you’ll be you are today.”

— Chris Cornell

48. “We are neighbors in a modern world where proximity is relative and the threshold to our hearts moves outside time and space.”

— Chris Cornell