The 59-year-old Haverhill, Massachusetts-born musician and filmmaker Rob Zombie has been impacting culture through his music and movies for decades. Known for a surreal circus-like despair, Zombie has revved fans’ internal engines and contributed to explosive works, some hit and some miss.
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But with so much character to him, some might wonder what the Grammy-nominated artist has to say outside of his songs and movies. While he has worked with the likes of Alice Cooper, released seven solo studio albums and four more with his band White Zombie and unleashed strange horror works like the Halloween remake in 2007, Zombie has even more to say beyond his creations. Here below, we will dive into his best 20 quotes.
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1. “Great things come out of being hungry and cold. Once you’re pampered, you get lazy.”
2. “I really just do what I like. I don’t understand what the general public likes sometimes.”
3. “It’s never been about making money.”
4. “I’m not a big fan of the thought that you can become a star by winning a contest. I’m sort of old-fashioned. I think people need to get out there and they need to work and they need to do their music because they love it. If they become successful, then great, and if they are not, whatever.”
5. “White Zombie was a bunch of kids with the worst equipment playing in a basement. But that is what is so great about it. There is no reason to think that you can’t do it.”
6. “When you have too many people and you’re trying to satisfy everybody’s input, you usually end up with something so incredibly generic that it has no point of view.”
7. “I like movies where you can come back and re-watch them and admire the cinematography 25 years later.”
8. “I remember, especially like when I was in high school, going to see like Dawn of the Dead and it was like mayhem in the theater and you could barely even watch the movie. It was so fun.”
9. “Probably the biggest thing that surprises people is that I am obsessed with hockey. I grew up in the Boston area so I am obsessed with hockey since I was a little kid.”
10. “Without really analyzing it, I grew up in Massachusetts, so the Salem witch trials were always something that I was around. The average kindergartner probably doesn’t know about it, except that in Massachusetts, you do, because they’ll take you on field trips to see reenactments and stuff.”
11. “I think probably the scariest thing, as weird as it sounds, was ‘The Wizard of Oz’ and the flying monkeys with the witch. I remember seeing that—it still seems freaky.”
12. “All the classic bands that have been around forever, they came up gradually.”
13. “The funny thing is, I’m so used to not caring what anyone says, good or bad, that unfortunately even when people say good things… I wish it made me feel good, but it doesn’t.”
14. “Growing up, I had the weird fantasy list: I wanted to be Alice Cooper, Steven Spielberg, and Stan Lee. You have to have almost psychotic drive, because you’re going to have years of failure.”
15. “My advice: Don’t quit. When I got to New York City, I lived so far below the poverty line, because I didn’t give in and get a job at 7-Eleven. I think you can thrive in misery.”
16. “I don’t believe in fate, because I’m not spiritual, but things do seem to work out.”
17. “I don’t know that I have a fascination with witches per se—well, maybe I just have a fascination with everything that’s weird.”
18. “But I think bands that rolled in with a big attitude, like they were some big deal, I just found that very strange.”
19. “I’d always want to decorate my bedroom. I needed visuals and to be stimulated by things. I’m still like that. It’s the way I see the world.”
20. “I think so much about everything. I’m obsessive.”
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