Tom Araya's Quotes

We just bought a new house, so my wife's been doing all the moving and other stuff, so I would like to go home and just sit and enjoy all that for a couple months before I gotta start playing again.

When you're in a club or a theater or even an arena, yeah, you want visuals, you want a good light show. But Slayer has always been about the sound. We have to sound good. It has to be tight.

As far as thinking about death and murder and various ways of killing people and how people die... I probably have the most twisted mind in Slayer.

From the heaviest of the heavy to classical to country, that's what I listen to, I listen to a variety and I enjoy good music, good songs.

I try to incorporate melody. Even though I'm screaming, I still like to think I bring melody into screaming.

Yeah, yeah I think that's one of the biggest misconceptions towards the band. The biggest one is that we're Satan worshippers, but next to that just the fact that we're normal.

I read a book recently by a psychiatrist who was able to interview a few serial killers and she had a thesis on how you could figure these people out. And she thinks that there are things that could tell you whether someone has the potential to do that.

I follow politics, but I don't like to discuss it.

As long as it's good music, that's what's important.

Fortune is either with you or it's not.

I had to be at least 8 or 9; I was listening to everything on the radio. You name it, I heard every song.

I just don't write musically, but lyrically, yeah I write.

I was born and raised Catholic.

I write, I write, I always write.

If it were bad songs, yeah, I'd speak up, but they're not bad songs.

No, I have to really focus, especially when I'm writing because I wanna be good at it.

Oh yeah, our first tour in Europe they wouldn't give me the time off from work.

Venom was a band that strongly influenced the image and the idea behind Slayer.

Whatever had been on the radio in the '60s; I mean we were always listening to the radio.

After that I didn't listen to music as much because '70s music just wasn't... I remember all the songs, but it wasn't because I was into them, you know what I mean?

I read true crime books, and I read when people do case studies of stuff. I'm into books like that. Case studies or forensics or murder - all that good stuff.

I went to school for about 2 years on a technical course, and I learned a lot. I learned about air mixture ratios and all the stuff; I learned how to draw blood.

I would have to work on the song and figure out how they wanted the song done, because they're such high-intensity songs. We figure that out first, then I go back and listen to it and go over and rehearse stuff with it and try to get a feel for the words.

Sometimes I'll sing the same verse through the entire song, because the other verses aren't clicking. And when they do come to me, I'm in the middle of that same verse!

That was the reasoning behind learning to play bass, and then after that it was more like it was neat to play songs together - for me to play bass and for him to play guitar.

To fans in a festival setting it's like a picnic. You want to have a good time with your friends in that crowd. And in the background you hear the band play, 'Oh, that's my favorite song!' everyone is there to enjoy the afternoon and that's about it.