I didn't have any work to do, and I had files of my personal and Guns N' Roses financial statements for the previous eight years. I wanted to learn how to read these, but I didn't trust anybody. I just got a lightbulb in my head and said, 'I want to go to school.' That began my journey, taking accountancy and business classes at Seattle.

When the record company pays you an advance, it is just that - an advance. And it's at worse rates than any bank would charge you to pay them back.

In rock n' roll, we don't sell records at all like we used to. Yet the artist still has to pay to make records. So you've just got to get out on tour and be smarter about your merchandising.

You know what's a great song that will be stuck in your head if I say it? 'Single Ladies,' by Beyonce. Killer song.

I saw some really amazing stuff with Axl. We worked really well together. We were good friends. And I hope to perhaps have that friendship back one day, although it's not something I wait around for.

'The Joshua Tree' was the soundtrack of my life when we were making 'Appetite.'

Axl's favorite record in 1987 was 'Faith,' by George Michael.

I started playing in punk-rock bands and touring when I was 15, so I missed high school.

I'm not Cormac McCarthy, but I can get my point across in a thousand words.

I'm really not about changing my image.

I saw the Clash in '79 at the Paramount in Seattle, and it changed my whole life.

Playing with Iggy pulled me back in for a while and reminded me of what I love about music.

One of the first 45s I ever bought was the Stooges' 'I Got a Right.' Probably one of my favorite singles, ever.

I find in my career that I never know what's going to happen in two months.

I don't have resentments towards anyone I played with or to the guy who bullied me in the sixth grade. I've worked through it.

Is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that important to me? No. Is it something I've aspired towards? No.

When you're a musician, you are around your peers a lot, like Slipknot and Alice In Chains... you name the band. We're all just kind of friends.

By the time Guns n' Roses spent 28 months from 1991 to 1993 touring the 'Use Your Illusion' albums, the tour staff sometimes approached 100 people. We were carrying not only backup girl singers, a horn section, and an extra keyboard player, but also chiropractors, masseuses, a singing coach, and a tattoo artist.

Any musician in any band - for a really good band - you know your part in the band.

I don't know where I'm rated. I don't pay attention to that. I'm really so just all into my craft. It's not a contest. I try to play the best.

I have always been a huge sports fan, but more of the pedestrian and 'homer' sort.

I have panic attacks here and there, like in the weirdest places ever, and I've learned to deal with them.

I've had a panic disorder since I was sixteen, and they always said that's a subset of depression. And I'm like, 'I don't have depression.'

I learned, by the time I was twenty, I'm not gonna die from a panic attack; you feel like you're going to.

One of my first memories is marching with my mom. I was in kindergarten with with the Catholic ladies when Martin Luther King Jr. got shot. We wore the black armbands and marched downtown.

I just don't like reality TV.

I had a column for the 'Seattle Weekly' for five years, and there was one column that was called 'How To Be A Man,' and it was kind of tongue in cheek; it was really tongue in cheek. And I got a book deal from that column.

I'm a book nerd, and I've seen authors that I love, I've gone and seen them speak or read from a book.

Personally, I had made a good amount of dough for a 30-year-old guy, but I didn't know a thing about money. I'm not a dumb guy, but I couldn't figure them out.

Writing's another expression of art, really, that I'm just kind of discovering as I go.

I have a wife and two kids.

I've been very fortunate. But rich? People make huge assumptions about the guys in Gn'R.

When you know you have a good song, when you're onstage, even if it's just a weird, basic energy, you know your song is good.

I never had a personal beef with Axl, truth be told.

It's a modern world we live in, with everything at our fingertips, and if it's not at our fingertips, you can dot-com anything.

Sometimes, when you get into a record, it's like writing a book, and you get so far inside the story you can't tell anymore if it's gonna be good to an outside listener.

Everybody in Seattle thought I was the chosen one, musically wise. You know, if anyone was going to make it, it was going to be that guy.

Three weeks into being in Hollywood, I was playing with Slash through an ad in the paper.

I have a teenage daughter and a 10-year-old daughter. Things are pink and fluffy at my house, with two little dogs. It's pretty funny to be me now. And I'm in on the joke that is my life.

Never in my life have I thought, 'Man, I gotta get a Grammy.'

I read Slash's book because we were on the road together with Velvet Revolver when that came out.

Keep a meter on your fear. Fear can cripple you.

I came up in the punk rock scene of Seattle.

Music was going to be my thing. Was I going to make a living at it? That was kind of a joke. It was just my passion, and if I was broke doing my passion, so be it.

We wrote the songs we wrote - we took from our own experiences, melded it together, and wrote what became 'Appetite For Destruction.'

My twenties were tumultuous at best... I think.

You can't mass produce somebody's heart and soul. It's a very delicate thing.

Rock n' roll is a volatile thing; at least, it's supposed to be.

It's volatile with GNR. Every night, it's anarchy on stage. Who knows what's gonna happen? That's rock n' roll, man.

Axl did sometimes have volatile actions, but I knew that guy as a whole - all the good stuff, too.