- Billie Joe Armstrong: I have never put so much emotion into any record like I have into every song that's on American Idiot.
- Michael Mayer: Billie Joe is so famous and he is so careful to protect his family from so many people who want a piece of him...
- Billie Joe Armstrong: I'm lucky to have a cellphone right now.
- Michael Mayer: ...that he's really carved out a very private life for himself and his family - and be involved in a show. The minute you're in a show, you are part of that extended family, for good or bad. For both, right?
- Billie Joe Armstrong: I felt sort of validated as a song writer. My melodies felt validated. You know, people don't really talk about these things like that in the rock world so much, that, you know, it's either a good song or it's a bad song, or it's, you know, does it rock? Is there a riff? Where's the hook? Where's the blah-blah-blah-blah?
- Billie Joe Armstrong: [to some cast members] I don't know if you guys have done award show thing or any... anything close to it, but it's like kind of basically playing to cameras more than it is playing to crowd, 'cause everybody is a fuckin' zombie. Like, they're all... everyone's nominated, like, white-knuckling it the whole time, you know, like. So that's one thing we figured out a long time ago.
- Billie Joe Armstrong: The reaction was... amazing. One hard-core Green Day fan, he's, "Oh, my God." I go, "It's not what you thought it was gonna be, was it?" And he was like, "Not at all." And then I heard someone say, "I guess this was inspired by a rock band or something like that?" I mean, they had no clue what Green Day was, and that was really exciting because it was reaching a... a whole new audience.
- Michael Mayer: Billie Joe went from being moderately interested to getting more intrigued to becoming passionate about what the whole Broadway vibe was; so, by the time I suggested to him that my secret dream was that someday he would play Saint Jimmy, he couldn't... I-I saw a little light behind his eyes, a flicker of excitement. He said, "Oh, really? You think so?" I'm like, "Uh-huh." And the next day he called and said, "Oh, my God, are you serious about this? I'm shitting."
- Billie Joe Armstrong: In the old days, coming from sort of an underground scene, there was a lot of bands that you would watch that were your friends' bands and things like that. You know, everyone would sort of feed off each other and have fun, but at the same time be, you know, learning. Once Green Day took off, we started losing that. We were losing friends - which is fine, you know. I mean, it's like you only... you only need a few, but, it's, um... it's, uh... It-it gets, uh... I-it just became difficult to sort of find, um, kindred spirits in that way. When the cast came along, I started to feel it again - and I've always wanted that. I've always been, almost... eh-eh... almost naive about it where I wanted to make those kinds of relationships. And it didn't happen in rock and roll music. It happened in theater. That's the thing that sort of, uh, blindsided me.
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