GRiZ Quotes

I think it would be super, hella cool to hop into a cab & hear my song on the radio – like, ‘Yeah!’ – and also be like, ‘Who is this Griz guy? He’s horrible.’ That’d be really cool.

You need to be able to communicate your feelings. We need to be able to do that to feel empowered.

I wanna take a step forward, and I also wanna make sure that step forward is the step that I want and that I’m not being pressured by life. You try and get better at doing something, and a lot of the time, it’s because somebody told you that you needed to be better.

There is so much energy when you work with other people. I’m working with friends and having a blast.

Everyone wants to grow, but I’m not trying to reinvent myself anytime soon.

Zelda is the best solo game; Mario Cart is the best group game.

My one experience with Lollapalooza was in 2009 – it was actually the first music festival I’ve ever been to.

I was a huge fan of ’90s hip-hop, and a lot of what they got their music from was funk and soul records. They just, like, take a clip of that and rap over it because, you know, that was just kind of what was up.

Stay in school and band, kids! It had its nerdy moments, and I always felt like I wanted to do something more with it.

I haven’t written my favorite song yet, and I hope I never do.

Being in the high-school band was some of the funnest years of my life.

It’s all about the music. Everything else is just extra.

For ‘The Anthem,’ a lot of my fans were like ‘Oh, man, he’s getting lazy making just, like, a pop format tune that everyone’s doing these days.’ But on this album, I wanted to write songs with vocals that would get stuck in my head, not just movements of instrumentals.

It is totally cool to be gay.

I was surprised how supportive my family and friends were in my coming out, and it gave and still gives me hope.

I have always been very interested in thinking deeply about things. I do this a lot.

I like mixing things up. That makes it more interesting. I love mixing in slower funk with what I do. I’ll add drum and bass and put my foot to the gas pedal and press it to the floor.

I love looking out at a sea of people. It’s mind-blowing. But I also like playing clubs.

The most important thing, to me is the intention of where things come from, like, why did you use it? What were the intentions of what you did? And if the intention is good, the intention is pure, then everything will turn out good.

There was so much pressure to fit in, I tried to force myself to be like everyone else. The last thing any teen wants is to be ‘uncool.’

When you first start photographing a show or being into photography, you might think it’s cool to see people with their phones, like, ‘It’s so novel; everyone cares about this moment so much,’ but then it becomes… trite, y’know, and shallow. I think the best moments of my life have been spent without phones.

My life is my music, so how can I stop? I put 100 percent into my career. I keep this flow going, and that’s important.

The environment of San Francisco has so much history to it that I really appreciate. Musically, socially, and culturally. There’s this new culture of people; it’s a crazy place to be.

If you make music with business in your head, it’ll show. I make it from the heart. There’s a difference.

I think we’re finally in a culture now where being gay is normalized.

I never really had the chance to play the kind of music I wanted to play. It was always just classical. It had its limits. I play piano now and again in the new forms of music that I actually want to play, but at the time, it was something that I just kind of moved past.

Computers are really patient. They can sit there all day. It’s a totally different situation dealing with humans. They can be tired or overly excited.

We just love Denver. The love and support from people here is amazing.

In this day and age, I really just don’t want to sell people on something. I don’t want to have to sell you sound. I don’t like selling emotions. Or ideas. I just want to give you these ideas and inspire people.

I also think something that makes the whole live performance fun for me is that I love my music.

When I was a kid, I was a really bad collaborator. I was pretty introverted.

I don’t need more money. I don’t need that to be happy.

My brother has been, and will always be, my closest friend.

I’m obsessed with the sound of today, but I was raised on the Motown sound.

I love hip-hop, and I like the beats the most.

I love playing live and creating these records that people are so into.

My roots in electronic music go from weird glitch music to now what’s seen as pop music. Electronic music is pop music now.

Most of the people that work for me are my friends, and I’d like to keep it that way.

My whole thing, to keep myself interested – and, you know, I’m a huge hip-hop head – I have tons and tons of a cappellas. So I do these live remix mash-ups with my tracks and just throw them in there.

Always focus on the music first. That’s the big thing. Staying true to making good music and not sacrificing that for anything.