"i know what it feels like to grow up in this place... to have hopes and dreams is sometimes crushed... all i know is that in new jersey, sometimes the best you've ever thought is, okay let me give you an example. mikey way was in kindergarten, and they took a class trip to a k-mart... it was like they were showing these little kids 'this is what you can do'. not that there was anything wrong with that at all, but that was the kind of bar they were setting for us... high school is where you are going to meet your wife or husband... there was no sense of 'go, get out here'... everyone was like 'yes, stay here, stay in new jersey, stay in the same house. live here, and die here, and work here, and drink here.'" (30:21)
"i know i'm never getting out of belleville." (x)
"[about belleville] it was the sort of place that kept its arms around you until, before you knew it, you’d been there half your life and didn’t stand much chance of leaving. you could get by, live a life, and die a death without ever escaping its confines." (x)
"where we’re from, a suburb of a city, there’s nothing to do but drink, fight, and fuck, it’s very easy to get caught in this fucking working-class, punch-the-clock, get bombed, and try-to-find-someone-to-poke lifestyle.” (x)
"the reason i bring up the triumph and tragedy of a local cart-pusher is because it was one of those magical times in a young man's life when you realize, by god seeming to push his icy thumb on you in a parking lot in nowheresville, new jersey, that you have no future." (x)
"this [‘common people’] is a song that, growing up in new jersey, it was very important to me and mikey. it was very relevant to us, feeling like you were in a place you could never get out of, that you were never going to escape. i remember pushing carts at a supermarket listening to this song on headphones on a cassette player and wondering whether the hell i was ever going to get out of new jersey." (x)
"i actually wasn't social at all. i was just hanging out in the fucking dark making comics. i grew up without sunlight. we lived in a basement and there was this little sliver of sunlight that would wake me up, like just a crack, and i would reach to it sometimes. [laughs] oh man." (x)
"we were hanging out one night and somehow the conversation came up about being from a town that you never think you’re gonna get out of. and she said that she had memories of drugstore perfume; i was like wow, that kind of sums up where i was from, too. and that’s really what it’s about. i thought about when i was 15-16, with no hope of getting out of that town." (x)
"the music that was recorded in new jersey, a lot of that had to do with wanting to escape. and it’s not that i hated the place, it’s just where i was born and i never thought i was getting out of it." (x)
"well she's always going on / about the town you grew up in" -> "and you're walking away and i will die in this place" -> "you know if i come around this way again / it’s gonna be a surprise"
because he does not go back to new jersey. he feels like he was "running away from" something there. "i think a lot of people feel that way about the town they grew up in" he says... "it would be nice to go back and do something there musically"... he's careful with his words, though. he doesn't say, "i want to," or, "i hope to," or anything to insinuate that he has plans to do anything about these feelings ever. he just says, multiple times, "it would be nice." (x)
"i haven't been to new jersey in a really long time. i really have been wanting to go back to belleville and just take a drive around. i haven't seen it in so long... i'm just going on and on, lets get into the next song." [thank you for the venom plays] (x)
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