“I wrote ‘She Wolf’ about something that happened to a manager we had at the time who I was really close with. He had just started dating this girl. I knew she was dating him because she had just broken up with her boyfriend, who was one of my friends who worked at MTV. And I had heard from my wife and Ellefson’s wife that they saw her back with her ex while she was dating my friend. We went down to Brazil and she tried to pick up on me down there. When I got back to America I told my friend what happened, and she goes, “No, he tried picking up on me.” I was really, really mad. “How could you say that about me? You’re not even attractive.” And I go, “OK, you’re it. I’m gonna lay you out.” So I wrote ‘She Wolf’ about her.”Dave Mustaine (993)

“‘A Secret Place’ is one of the last songs we wrote on Cryptic Writings and we were out at this place that used to be Al Capone’s getaway. It was a hand-cut stone castle, and he would take people out there to go gambling and he’d shoot a plug in them and bury ’em in the backyard. One day this dog comes running up and it had what looked like a human leg bone, because there were a lot of unmarked graves behind the studio. I never knew for sure.  At the time I was having trouble writing lyrics and I had one more song left to go. When I saw this dog, I just went, “Whoa, man. This is a really secret place.” And I was in there singing and I hear this footprint go across the roof and there’s nobody else in the building except for me and the guy on the other side of the glass in the control room. We didn’t know if it was the wind creaking or if it was some ghost up there ’cause the place is supposed to be haunted. It’s pretty cool.”Dave Mustaine (993)

“When I was working on the record, I went to a 12-step meeting in a place right next to the studio. The guy who runs it told me he had something to show me, and he had this box and goes, “Check this out.” And I’m looking through it and he goes, “That’s Bob,” for lack of a better name. Then he told me that earlier in the day, a guy had gone to a meeting and then shot up and died at the halfway house and that this box was all his stuff. So he’s having me casually look through this stuff and told me it was a dead guy’s. I was like, “Fucker.” He was trying to get a message across to me and it worked – I’m still alive. I wrote the lyrics to “Use the Man” immediately. “I heard somebody fixed today/There was no last goodbyes to say.” There’s a proverb in China or Japan that goes, “First the man takes a drink, then the drink takes the drink, then the drink takes the man.” I thought, “The same thing could be said about the needle.” First the man uses the needle, then the needle uses the needle, then the needle uses the man. And that’s where the title came from. These guys come out of prison, go to a halfway house, their systems have cleaned out, but they think they can use half as much and get twice as high. They don’t realize that their systems have cleaned out, and they O.D. So that’s what “Use the Man” was about. It’s a very, very sad song about people overdosing on drugs, and it was also inspired by Neil Young’s ‘Needle and the Damage Done.'”Dave Mustaine (993)

“The song is about loving my fellow man and wanting them – for us – to pull together and to really just try and not be so, just, angsty for one another. People are so quick to jump on somebody if they say something wrong or if they’re wearing the wrong thing. We’ve got the fucking typo police on the net.”Dave Mustaine (9933)

“Mary Jane is a girl who lived in Jackson, Minnesota, and her father buried her alive in 1904 cos he thought she was a witch. The tombstone’s still there and you can just make out what it says. I think you should be able to do whatever you want, whenever you want, and for her father to have buried her that’s his right cos she was still a child. Murder’s one thing but putting the stopper on witchcraft, that’s another. Maybe it was a bit extreme, him burying her alive, especially if she had any powers, because the father was probably rendered insane. That’s why the song says, ‘From the earth up through the trees, I can hear her calling me.’ I tell you, some kids went and turned her headstone over and as they were driving back from the gravesite, the car flipped over. There were three people on the back seat and everybody came out unscratched except for the one who turned over the gravestone – he died.”Dave Mustaine (996)

“It’s about my romance with chemical abuse and how I felt that the actual poison was the cure to my problems.”Dave Mustaine (995)

“‘Tornado of Souls’ was written the day I broke up with my fiancé; it explains what I went through, how I sprang out of it. I thought my existence was in that relationship – I was trapped in the eye of a tornado, and if I stepped out of line, I’d be blown to oblivion. No more whirlwind romances for me. If I do get back in that situation, I’m gonna be very aware now and check the weather before I get involved. This morning I made the call that ended it all. Hanging up, I wanted to cry some more, but my wells have gone dry. I’m very jaded and tainted as far as like, being the loving person, unless I know it’s what I want.”Dave Mustaine (995)

“The track ‘Youthanasia’ says: We are the damned of all the world/The wounded of the wars with sadness in our hearts/We’ve been hung out to dry/You never loved us anyway/Now we’ve made-up our minds/Tried to run our lives/We run to euthanasia…’ It’s all about the fact that it’s your life, and like any animal, when you’re backed into a corner you lash out. And if you’re in a life and death battle which is becoming futile because you are not going to win, it’s much easier to choose your own way out.”Dave Mustaine (997)