The 61-year-old New Jersey-born rocker Jon Bon Jovi is known for his big hair and rock music that resembles the smash and crash of a city as much as it does a tornado through the country. It’s powerful stuff, in other words.
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For the east coast icon, music is a way of life. But along with it, as you’ll see below, Bon Jovi has always kept his priorities straight: health and family. A lover of sports, particularly football, and a “seducer” of audiences, Bon Jovi is a legend.
But with all that experience and talent, one might wonder what Bon Jovi, who has released 15 studio albums with his namesake band along with two solo albums, might have to say about the world at large, about life, love, and his craft.
Without further ado, here are the 25 best Jon Bon Jovi quotes.
1. “Miracles happen every day, change your perception of what a miracle is and you’ll see them all around you.”
2. “Map out your future—but do it in pencil. The road ahead is as long as you make it. Make it worth the trip.”
3. “Nothing is as important as passion. No matter what you want to do with your life, be passionate.”
4. “Believe in love. Believe in magic. Hell, believe in Santa Clause. Believe in others. Believe in yourself. Believe in your dreams. If you don’t, who will?”
5. “I pray every day, several times. It soothes me. I don’t ask for anything, except for health.”
6. “I like progress but I hate change.”
7. “Women rule the world. It’s not really worth fighting because they know what they’re doing. Ask Napoleon. Ask Adam. Ask Richard Burton or Richie Sambora. Many a man has crumbled.”
8. “Piano playing is a dying art. I love the fact that I can be one guy with one instrument evoking an emotional and musical experience.”
9. “I was just another long-haired teenage kid with visions of grandeur, strumming a tennis racket or a broom in front of his bedroom mirror.”
10. “Guys will take one pair of jeans, five T-shirts, and three pair of socks and that’ll get you by for 10 weeks.”
11. “There are those who advocate and those who do. I’m not trying to slight my peers, but there is a difference between using a soapbox and actually getting your hands dirty.”
12. “My background’s working class. My parents had to work to make ends meet. We don’t come from any sense of privilege.”
13. “If you were to ask me about a mistake I have made, it’s calling my fourth album, ‘New Jersey’, because for the first time in my life, we were compared to the E Street Band.”
14. “This is the way I look at sex scenes: I have basically been doing them for a living for years. Trying to seduce an audience is the basis of rock ‘n roll, and if I may say so, I’m pretty good at it.”
15. “New Jersey shaped who and what I am. Growing up in Jersey gave you all the advantages of New York, but you were in its shadow. Anyone who’s come from here will tell you that same story.”
16. “The Rolling Stones set the bar to where I look to as a band. But I don’t envision myself touring in the way they do. My knees won’t hold out.”
17. “Success is falling nine times and getting up ten.”
18. “There’s a vintage which comes with age and experience.”
19. “Don’t get too comfortable with who you are at any given time – you may miss the opportunity to become who you want to be.”
20. “If people have to tell you how successful they are, they really aren’t that successful.”
21. “We are at a crossroads in the music business: with the rise of the internet, the world we live in has changed, and the past is not coming back. But I see the glass as half-full: the internet and social networking are new avenues for the next Bob Dylan to be born on.”
22. “I went to a radio station on Long Island in 1982, and thank goodness for me, it was so new that there was no receptionist. So the DJ opened up his booth, and took my tape and listened to it and thought it was a hit song.”
23. “I went to Catholic school in and out. I’m what you call a recovering Catholic. I have many major issues with the church.”
24. “You just stay the course, and do what it is that you do, and grow while you’re doing it. Eventually, it will either come full circle or at least you’ll go to bed at night happy.”
25. “I don’t work well outside the lines; my report card once read, ‘doesn’t play well with others.'”
Photo by Jason Kempin/Getty Images
