Top 35 Stone Gossard Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “My methodology is not knowing what I’m doing and making that work for me.”

— Stone Gossard

2. “Raising awareness, changing the marketplace, effecting spiritual change – whatever it is that you decide is your thing, go for it.”

— Stone Gossard

3. “Words can have the same kind of magic as riffs can.”

— Stone Gossard

4. “Politics is tricky; it cuts both ways. Every time you make a choice, it has unintended consequences.”

— Stone Gossard

5. “I think if you exercise, your state of mind – my state of mind – is usually more at ease, ready for more mental challenges. Once I get the physical stuff out of the way it always seems like I have more calmness and better self-esteem.”

— Stone Gossard

6. “Right, those relationships with your parents and family are the hardest to figure out, and the same patterns get carried into a band situation.”

— Stone Gossard

7. “I like rhythmic things that butt up against each other in a cool kind of way.”

— Stone Gossard

8. “A lot of fun stuff happens when you go out on a bike compared to when you’re in a car. You’re more in the environment. It’s enjoyable. Even when It’s raining It’s still fun.”

— Stone Gossard

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9. “It’s really comforting for me and Jeff, at least, that after 12 years we finally feel we’ve reached a place where we can be more honest, real and loving with each other. And we’re finally in a band that we know is good, and deserves the credit it’s getting.”

— Stone Gossard

10. “Dave played an important part in our growing, but change occurs.”

— Stone Gossard

11. “Every year is filled with good times and fights and struggles and misunderstandings. All of it adds up to being in a band over a long time.”

— Stone Gossard

12. “I like myself. I think I’m cool. But I think when you’re in a band you take on a role within the band, and I think people over the course of years can identify those roles as almost being bigger than just the individual. I don’t know. It’s kind of hard to talk about.”

— Stone Gossard

13. “I picked up a guitar, and I knew what I wanted to do.”

— Stone Gossard

14. “I think people will always love a heavy Sabbath riff because it’s fundamental to rock.”

— Stone Gossard

15. “Call it holistic or holographic thinking, it’s been quite effective imagining the world’s problems are all right in front of you on a smaller scale with your band. You deal with those relationships, and that’s where real major change begins.”

— Stone Gossard

16. “You know, at 35 or at 38 or 40 you really start to see what your body could look like if you just don’t do anything all winter long. So that’s another motivating factor, our vanity.”

— Stone Gossard

17. “I’ve always related music to those moments when someone turns you loose on something and they haven’t told you how to do it.”

— Stone Gossard

18. “It’s a perfectly human instinct to want to be near water.”

— Stone Gossard

19. “I’ve seen neighborhoods that I would have never driven though because I’m riding my bike, because I’m looking for side roads, looking for maybe more hills or less hills depending if I’m exercising or not. You see a lot more, and you get the flow of a city a lot more.”

— Stone Gossard

20. “It would be great to take one city street and turn it into a pedestrian corridor and see what kind of effect it has on the businesses in that area – It’s the future I think.”

— Stone Gossard

21. “I walked to Seward School first through fourth grade. It’s just amazing to me now that we’d walk down 10th Avenue on Capitol Hill.”

— Stone Gossard

22. “I think it’s evident that expensive neighborhoods in Seattle are surrounded by natural beauty. That elevates city life. So if we can make cities more attractive in the long run, we can be smarter about issues like development, zoning and economics.”

— Stone Gossard

23. “If you have a lot of nature in your city, it becomes a more enjoyable place. That’s my own feeling about it.”

— Stone Gossard

24. “I learn stuff from making music every time I go in the studio. I’m continuing to try to find new ways to play in a song or be in a song and have a positive impact on a song.”

— Stone Gossard

25. “That’s not to say Eddie’s never done anything malicious. But he never grabbed power for power’s sake. His position was gained only because he has that energy, and that’s naturally where he ended up.”

— Stone Gossard

26. “I really enjoy not getting in a car and running errands on bikes.”

— Stone Gossard

27. “I just know that I love to write songs, and I have for a long time.”

— Stone Gossard

28. “We may take breaks and do other things, but we feel we’ll ultimately have Pearl Jam as a family.”

— Stone Gossard

29. “On some planet, I probably could have been a lawyer. On some planet, I could have been somebody in advertising.”

— Stone Gossard

30. “A significant event for me was learning Hank Williams, reconnecting with his music’s simplicity, which inspired me to inhabit the same territory. It’s different, because I grew up on Led Zeppelin, The Stooges and punk, so in that sense I’m mutating country and folk more than a few degrees.”

— Stone Gossard

31. “It’s a very complex scenario, and certainly Dave was, and is, not the only person in Pearl Jam with personality flaws. Everybody in this band exhibits some form of neurotic behavior. And we couldn’t find a balance, a mutual respect for each other.”

— Stone Gossard

32. “I liked the banana-seat bikes with the high handlebars – maybe a card in the wheel could have been part of it.”

— Stone Gossard

33. “As a songwriter, it’s kind of hard to listen to your own stuff with clarity.”

— Stone Gossard

34. “I think I have my own sort of distinctive swing, for sure. I think that’s something that comes really natural to me, to push against the beat and kind of explore a triplet feel behind everything just to see what that feels like.”

— Stone Gossard

35. “Well, you go to Holland and everybody’s on a bike – nobody would think to have a car.”

— Stone Gossard

36. “I like to play music. I like projects. I like excuses to hang out with my friends and play music.”

— Stone Gossard