Brian Welch Quotes

Religion is when people try to act good because they're afraid to go to hell. A relationship with Jesus Christ is for people like me who have already been to hell.

The most important lesson that we're supposed to be learning right now is how completely lost we are without God. If we don't learn this lesson, then our lives are going to have zero meaning. (Stronger: Forty Days of Metal and Spirituality)

It must grieve God’s heart when he sees Christians fighting about whose doctrine is right; he doesn’t see denominations, he sees one big glorious bride. When Christians argue about doctrinal issues, all he sees is carnal people acting like children. All that prideful, controlling religious crap is what drives young people away from churches, and it has to go. Much of the world’s population is under the age of eighteen, and we have to bring the love of Christ to them without all this controlling crap going on. Because, where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

But then one day I finally realized that screaming at God and begging him to take away my pain wasn’t going work. So I completely surrendered myself and stopped fighting him and I asked him what he wanted me to do. He said: JUST WORSHIP ME. PRAISE ME AND WORSHIP ME THROUGH THE PAIN. And

I had a lot of Hell that God needed to squeeze out of me, and believe me, sometimes when the Hell leaves you it screams at God on the way out. And when the pain from your past leaves you, sometimes you have to feel it again on the way out. There's nothing we can say or do that can separate us from God's love.

The Walk of the Spirit—the Walk of Power by Dave Roberson

Sublime Books The Known World, by Edward P. Jones The Buried Giant, by Kazuo Ishiguro A Thousand Trails Home, by Seth Kantner House Made of Dawn, by N. Scott Momaday Faithful and Virtuous Night, by Louise Glück The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin My Sentence Was a Thousand Years of Joy, by Robert Bly The World Without Us, by Alan Weisman Unfortunately, It Was Paradise, by Mahmoud Darwish Collected Fictions, by Jorge Luis Borges, trans. Andrew Hurley The Xenogenesis Trilogy, by Octavia E. Butler Map: Collected and Last Poems, by Wisława Szymborska In the Lateness of the World, by Carolyn Forché Angels, by Denis Johnson Postcolonial Love Poem, by Natalie Diaz Hope Against Hope, by Nadezhda Mandelstam Exhalation, by Ted Chaing Strange Empire, by Joseph Kinsey Howard Tookie’s Pandemic Reading Deep Survival, by Laurence Gonzales The Lost City of the Monkey God, by Douglas Preston The House of Broken Angels, by Luis Alberto Urrea The Heartsong of Charging Elk, by James Welch Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, by Elisabeth Tova Bailey Let’s Take the Long Way Home, by Gail Caldwell The Aubrey/Maturin Novels, by Patrick O’Brian The Ibis Trilogy, by Amitav Ghosh The Golden Wolf Saga, by Linnea Hartsuyker Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky Coyote Warrior, by Paul VanDevelder Incarceration Felon, by Reginald Dwayne Betts Against the Loveless World, by Susan Abulhawa Waiting for an Echo, by Christine Montross, M.D. The Mars Room, by Rachel Kushner The New Jim Crow, by Michelle Alexander This Is Where, by Louise K. Waakaa’igan I Will Never See the World Again, by Ahmet Altan Sorrow Mountain, by Ani Pachen and Adelaide Donnelley American Prison, by Shane Bauer Solitary, by Albert Woodfox Are Prisons Obsolete?, by Angela Y. Davis 1000 Years of Joys and Sorrows, by Ai Weiwei Books contain everything worth knowing except what ultimately matters. —Tookie * * * If you are interested in the books on these lists, please seek them out at your local independent bookstore. Miigwech! Acknowledgments

There was a battle in my brain—in my soul—and I wasn’t sure who I was going to let win. This wasn’t the drugs talking to me; this was something different. It was almost like—well, it sounds weird—but it was almost like God and the devil were fighting over my soul. Like it was spiritual fight for my life, but it was up to me to make the final choice.

It was time for God to do all the work, and it was time for me to be quiet. That’s what got me through those dark times. Because God inhabits the praises of his people (Psalm 22:3), and he was right there with me the whole time. He taught me that the only thing I needed to do was be still and quiet while the pain surfaced, and then I could just cry it away.

You see, playing music isn’t work to me—I’d do it for free because being able to create music is a gift in itself. When God filled me with His Spirit after I gave my life to Jesus, I knew I was being given another gift—the most expensive gift that has ever been given. I felt like I’d won the ultimate lottery of the universe. I didn’t have to do anything to get this gift; it was given to me simply because I wanted God. And that free gift made me want to give God everything in my life.

For a while I considered dropping out of Barnard to help. It felt unbearably selfish, just downright wrong, to be indulging myself with an education in the liberal arts at a fancy private college while Mom and Dad were on the streets. But Lori convinced me that dropping out was a lamebrained idea. It wouldn’t do any good, she said, and besides, dropping out would break Dad’s heart. He was immensely proud that he had a daughter in college, and an Ivy League college at that. Every time he met someone new, he managed to work it into the first few minutes of conversation. Mom and Dad, Brian pointed out, had options. They could move back to West Virginia or Phoenix. Mom could work. And she was not destitute. She had her collection of antique Indian jewelry, which she kept in a self-storage locker. There was the two-carat diamond ring that Brian and I had found under the rotten lumber back in Welch; she wore it even when sleeping on the street. She still owned property in Phoenix. And she had the land in Texas, the source of her oil-lease royalties.

Tookie’s Pandemic Reading Deep Survival, by Laurence Gonzales The Lost City of the Monkey God, by Douglas Preston The House of Broken Angels, by Luis Alberto Urrea The Heartsong of Charging Elk, by James Welch Selected Stories of Anton Chekhov, trans. Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, by Elisabeth Tova Bailey Let’s Take the Long Way Home, by Gail Caldwell The Aubrey/Maturin Novels, by Patrick O’Brian The Ibis Trilogy, by Amitav Ghosh The Golden Wolf Saga, by Linnea Hartsuyker Children of Time, by Adrian Tchaikovsky Coyote Warrior, by Paul VanDevelder

People have asked me, “What’s your favorite part about your ministry to your fans?” My favorite part is that Jesus shows up and shows off. So why not go back to KoRn and hang out with these people? Didn’t Jesus leave all his perfection and beauty from his spiritual paradise at home as a King on his throne to come to the earth to hang out with us dirty, lying, cheating, messed-up, selfish humans? Are any of us better than the fans at KoRn concerts? No! Every single human being on the planet is just as in need of God’s love as the next. We all need Jesus, and my mind has been thoroughly blown away by the fact that I was chosen for this extremely unique call into the metal scene.

Totally Biased List of Tookie’s Favorite Books Ghost-Managing Book List The Uninvited Guests, by Sadie Jones Ceremonies of the Damned, by Adrian C. Louis Moon of the Crusted Snow, by Waubgeshig Rice Father of Lies, by Brian Evenson The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead Asleep, by Banana Yoshimoto The Hatak Witches, by Devon A. Mihesuah Beloved, by Toni Morrison The Through, by A. Rafael Johnson Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders Savage Conversations, by LeAnne Howe The Regeneration Trilogy, by Pat Barker Exit Ghost, by Philip Roth Songs for Discharming, by Denise Sweet Hiroshima Bugi: Atomu 57, by Gerald Vizenor Short Perfect Novels Too Loud a Solitude, by Bohumil Hrabel Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson Sula, by Toni Morrison The Shadow-Line, by Joseph Conrad The All of It, by Jeannette Haine Winter in the Blood, by James Welch Swimmer in the Secret Sea, by William Kotzwinkle The Blue Flower, by Penelope Fitzgerald First Love, by Ivan Turgenev Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf Waiting for the Barbarians, by J. M. Coetzee Fire on the Mountain, by Anita Desai

He had a lot of hell to squeeze out of me, and believe me—when the hell leaves you, sometimes it screams at God on the way out. And when the pain from your past leaves you, sometimes you have to feel it again on the way out.

Sitting at home that day and listening to her singing, I was thinking about how amazing she was. I was thinking about how she was the cutest person in the world, and how hard it would be to leave her to go back on tour that fall. Then I heard what she was singing. It was a Korn song called “A.D.I.D.A.S.,” which stands for “All Day I Dream About Sex.” These words were coming out of my five-year-old little girl’s mouth, and I knew right then that something had to change.

I also wrote some song lyrics while I was there, and I really felt like God was leading me to write a prophetic song to 50 Cent. One thing to keep in mind before you read these lyrics is that while I believe these words were inspired by God, written through me, to 50 Cent, more importantly I believe the words carry a message to everyone else in this generation, including myself. A message straight to us from God’s heart. Here are some of the lyrics to a song I wound up calling “A Cheap Name”: Wisdom comes through suffering Tell me why’d you let him give you a cheap name? It’s time to come home Playtime’s over now

Ghost-Managing Book List The Uninvited Guests, by Sadie Jones Ceremonies of the Damned, by Adrian C. Louis Moon of the Crusted Snow, by Waubgeshig Rice Father of Lies, by Brian Evenson The Underground Railroad, by Colson Whitehead Asleep, by Banana Yoshimoto The Hatak Witches, by Devon A. Mihesuah Beloved, by Toni Morrison The Through, by A. Rafael Johnson Lincoln in the Bardo, by George Saunders Savage Conversations, by LeAnne Howe The Regeneration Trilogy, by Pat Barker Exit Ghost, by Philip Roth Songs for Discharming, by Denise Sweet Hiroshima Bugi: Atomu 57, by Gerald Vizenor Short Perfect Novels Too Loud a Solitude, by Bohumil Hrabal Train Dreams, by Denis Johnson Sula, by Toni Morrison The Shadow-Line, by Joseph Conrad The All of It, by Jeannette Haien Winter in the Blood, by James Welch Swimmer in the Secret Sea, by William Kotzwinkle The Blue Flower, by Penelope Fitzgerald First Love, by Ivan Turgenev Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys Mrs. Dalloway, by Virginia Woolf Waiting for the Barbarians, by J. M. Coetzee Fire on the Mountain, by Anita Desai

Reggie’s was more complicated, as nicknames sometimes are. His first nickname started from me and a couple of friends back in Bako making fun of his big cheeks and big teeth by calling him “Gopher.” He obviously didn’t like that, so we made up this word, “Gar,” and to us it meant “Gopher,” so that’s what we started calling him under our breath. But then he found out what that meant. He was kinda fat back then, so we added “-field” to the end of it and started calling him “Garfield,” like the overweight cartoon cat. Eventually, the “Gar” got dropped and we wound up calling him “Fieldy.

And when the pain from your past leaves you, sometimes you have to feel it again on the way out.