In January of 1995, my family and I moved to Seattle. Pearl Jam did the first of their live radio broadcasts, Monkey Wrench Radio, along with many other Seattle musicians.

I began both auditioning with Pearl Jam and recording for Eleven. In the fall of 1994, I joined Pearl Jam.

I finished the recordings I had started with Eleven. Matt Cameron joined for the rest of those sessions.

I remember a tour where we played 50 cities in 56 days. We also went to Europe a couple of times.

I began hearing rumors of apossible recording session with Neil Young. I was a huge fan of Neil's.

After wrestling with myself for six months, I began medical treatment. During that time I started a band with some friends of mine called Jack's Car, but that didn't last.

We got a chance to go and play in some places that the usual European tour by an American band didn't go to.

I began the process of recording myself seriously in the fall of 1999. If I could finish an album of my own music, I would. Five years later I am happy to say I have.

"Yield" was completed in 1997 and released in 1998. In the spring of 1997, I had made a decision to stop taking medications that I had been taking daily since 1988.

Until now I had been able only to grieve, not mourn. Grief was passive. Grief happened. Mourning, the act of dealing with grief, required attention.

You said a curse is only a curse if I allowed myself to me cursed by it. You said... I had it in my power to free myself of any curse - that curses were preludes to blessings...

What a recovery of the wisdom of the Mother brings to all of us is the knowledge of inseparable connection with the entire creation and the wise, active love that is born from that knowledge.

I went to a doctor and told him I felt normal on acid, that I was a light bulb in a world of moths. That is what the manic state is like.

Having a gun in your hand is very empowering.

Vengeance is a personal reaction. But not one that government can indulge in.

Obviously, some people are thick, and they're not gonna see what they don't want to see.

War is the mass murder of workers. When workers refuse to obey the calls of their governments, there will be no more war.

Tis easy to write epigrams nicely, but to write a book is hard.

People think that just because you're a center, you're not as smart as the guards or the smaller guys.