Frank Zappa

“call any vegetable,call it by name,and the chances are goodthat the vegetable will respond to you”

“who are the brain police?”

“There are more love songs than anything else. If songs could make you do something we'd all love one another.”

“Alright. Let's get realistic now. You know and I know that the function of that number was just to provide some sort of warm-up trash before we do something HEAVY. Something a little bit harder to listen to, but which is probably better for you in the LONG RUN. The item in this instance, which will be better for you in the LONG RUN, and if we only had a little more space up here we could make it visual for you, is "Some Ballet Music," which we've played at most of our concert series in Europe. Generally in halls where we had a little bit more space and Motorhead and Kansas could actually fling themselves across the stage, and give you their teenage interpretation of the art of The Ballet. I don't think it's too safe to do it here, maybe they can just hug each other a little bit and do some calisthenics in the middle of the stage.”

“Books Are Good For Lots Of Uses, Not For Dropping In The Toilet.”

“lf you’re going to deal with reality, you’re going to have to make one big discovery: Reality is something that belongs to you as an individual. If you wanna grow up, which most people don’t, the thing to do is take responsibility for your own reality and deal with it on your own terms. Don’t expect that because you pay some money to somebody else or take a pledge or join a club or run down the street or wear a special bunch of clothes or play a certain sport or even drink Perrier water, it’s going to take care of everything for you.”

“I think it's really tragic when people get serious about stuff. It's such an absurdity to take anything really seriously ... I make an honest attempt not to take anything seriously: I worked that attitude out about the time I was eighteen, I mean, what does it all mean when you get right down to it, what's the story here? Being alive is so weird.”

“Politics is the entertainment branch of industry.”

“behind each breakaway movement is a breakaway demagogue who will set up his breakaway demagogue government.”

“The most important thing to do in your life is to not interfere with somebody else's life.”

“One size does not fit all.”

“Well, I'm not here to impinge on anybody else's lifestyle. If I'm in a place where I know I'm going to harm somebody's health or somebody asks me to please not smoke, I just go outside and smoke. But I do resent the way the nonsmoking mentality has been imposed on the smoking minority. Because, first of all, in a democracy, minorities do have rights. And, second, the whole pitch about smoking has gone from being a health issue to a moral issue, and when they reduce something to a moral issue, it has no place in any kind of legislation, as far as I'm concerned.”

“Republicans stand for raw, unbridled evil and greed and ignorance smothered in balloons and ribbons.”

“Most people don't bother about their friends in the vegetable kingdom.”

“Don't eat the yellow snow.”

“My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is: Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can.”

“Without "Louie Louie" a symphony is not quite so grand.”

“The only difference between a cult and a religion is the amount of real estate they own”“Stupidity has a certain charm - ignorance does not”“My best advice to anyone who wants to raise a happy, mentally healthy child is: Keep him or her as far away from a church as you can”“It would be easier to pay off the national debt overnight than to neutralize the long-range effects of our national stupidity”“Communism doesn't work because people like to own stuff.”

“Ohne Abweichung von der Norm ist Fortschritt nicht möglich.”

“Anybody who wants religion is welcome to it, as far as I'm concerned--I support your right to enjoy it. However, I would appreciate it if you exhibited more respect for the rights of those people who do not wish to share your dogma, rapture, or necrodestination.”

“Music without the ebb and flow would be like "watching a film with only good guys in it".”

“Anyone who is disturbed by the idea of newts in a nightclub is potentially dangerous.”

“Modern Americans behave as if intelligence were some sort of hideous deformity.”

“It's better to have something to remember than anything to regret.”

“The Ultimate Rule ought to be: 'If it sounds GOOD to you, it's bitchin'; if it sounds BAD to YOU, it's shitty. The more your musical experience, the easier it is to define for yourself what you like and what you don't like. American radio listeners, raised on a diet of _____ (fill in the blank), have experienced a musical universe so small they cannot begin to know what they like.”

“I like to watch the news, because I don't like people very much and when you watch the news ... if you ever had an idea that people were really terrible, you could watch the news and know that you're right.”

“A drug is not bad. A drug is a chemical compound. The problem comes in when people who take drugs treat them like a license to behave like an asshole.”

“For the record, folks; I never took a shit on stage and the closest I ever came to eating shit anywhere was at a Holiday Inn buffet in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in 1973.”

“The rock and roll business is pretty absurd, but the world of serious music is much worse.”

“If your children ever find out how lame you really are, they'll murder you in your sleep.”

“The more boring a child is, the more the parents, when showing off the child, receive adulation for being good parents — because they have a tame child-creature in their house.”

“May your shit come to life and kiss you on the face.”

“Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to our mediocre educational system. Forget about the Senior Prom and go to the library and educate yourself if you've got any guts. Some of you like Pep rallies and plastic robots who tell you what to read.”

“A wise man once said, never discuss philosophy or politics in a disco environment.”

“Drugs will turn you into your parents.”

“The creation and destruction of harmonic and 'statistical' tensions is essential to the maintenance of compositional drama. Any composition (or improvisation) which remains consonant and 'regular' throughout is, for me, equivalent to watching a movie with only 'good guys' in it, or eating cottage cheese.”

“The essence of Christianity is told us in the Garden of Eden history. The fruit that was forbidden was on the tree of knowledge. The subtext is, 'All the suffering you have is because you wanted to find out what was going on. You could be in the Garden of Eden if you had just kept your fucking mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions.”

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”

“I wrote a song about dental floss but did anyone's teeth get cleaner?”

“There is no such thing as a dirty word. Nor is there a word so powerful, that it's going to send the listener to the lake of fire upon hearing it.”

“I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird.”

“A composer is a guy who goes around forcing his will on unsuspecting air molecules, often with the assistance of unsuspecting musicians.”

“Government is the Entertainment division of the military-industrial complex.”

“Nobody looks good with brown lipstick on.”

“The bassoon is one of my favorite instruments. It has a medieval aroma, like the days when everything used to sound like that. Some people crave baseball...I find this unfathomable, but I can easily understand why a person could get excited about playing the bassoon.”

“Take the Kama Sutra. How many people died from the Kama Sutra as opposed to the Bible? Who wins?”

“There's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over.”

“I have an important message to deliver to all the cute people all over the world. If you're out there and you're cute, maybe you're beautiful. I just want to tell you somethin' — there's more of us UGLY MOTHERFUCKERS than you are, hey-y, so watch out.”

“The United States is a nation of laws, badly written and randomly enforced.”

“The most important thing in art is The Frame. For painting: literally; for other arts: figuratively-- because, without this humble appliance, you can't know where The Art stops and The Real World begins. You have to put a 'box' around it because otherwise, what is that shit on the wall?”