Scott Ian Quotations

Everything I do is metal. When I clean my house, it's metal.

To me, the guitar is a tool for songwriting, and it's fun, too. The day that it's not fun, that's when I'm not gonna play guitar anymore.

To be honest, I'm one of the least-technical guitar players around. I just want a guitar to feel good and sound good. That's it, period.

People think of Jews as the Woody Allen stereotype, the nebbishy kind of thing, but that's not the kind of Jews I know. I know plenty of Israelis and plenty of tough guys that are Jewish. So, I think it makes sense that Jews play metal.

As big as Metallica are, they're still not like a pop act. As big as they are, they're still not U2 or Lady Gaga. It's still underground.

I could care less about sitting around and practicing the guitar for hours a day and trying to be the best guitar player on the planet.

If someone wants to sticker a record for whatever reason, that's fine. But once it affects someone's opportunity to, you know, get that record, then I have a problem with it.

My grandfather was Orthodox, and he was religious, but neither of my parents were. Of course, as they got older, it seems like they get more religious the older they get, even though they're still not practicing Jews.

Even as a kid, if I would come across something cool in the record store, that would be how I found out about bands. It's kind of the same way these days. In a way even less because there are no record stores to go to anymore.

I'm certainly not a practicing Jew. I would never claim, 'I'm Jewish.' That's not the first and foremost thing in my mind, as far as who I am as a person.