Frank Zappa Quotes Page 4

“So much gets lost in the translation. Even if you sat there listening to it with a microscope, there’s no way you’re gonna find out what it means.”

“Some people like cupcakes but I for one, couldn't care less for them!”

“Sometimes a radio station will get ONE phone call from one person who screams that he is going to complain to the FCC. Instead of the guy at the station thinking about how many listeners love the song, want to hear it again, and will support the station for playing it, usually the guy panics – and takes my records off the air. I object that.”

“Stupidity has a certain charm - ignorance does not.”

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

“The biggest threat to America today is not communism. It's moving America toward a fascist theocracy, and everything that's happened during the Reagan administration is steering us right down that pipe. I really think that. When you have a government that prefers a certain moral code derived from a certain religion and that moral code turns into legislation to suit one certain religious point of view, and if that code happens to be very, very right wing, almost toward Attila the Hun.”

“The computer can’t tell you the emotional story. It can give you the exact mathematical design, but what’s missing is the eyebrows.”

“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 f*cking mouth shut and hadn't asked any questions.”

“The first thing you have to do if you want to raise nice kids, is you have to talk to them like they are people instead of talking to them like they're property.”

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.”

“The lifestyle that I have is probably neither desirable nor useful to most people. Most people are probably better off getting the certification they desire and spindling their lives away the way they’re doing. I don’t think they’d enjoy living any other way.”

“The manner in which Americans 'consume' music has a lot to do with leaving it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles, like the score of a movie –it's consumed that way without any regard for how and why it's made.”

“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.”

“The more you can escape from how horrible things really are, the less it's going to bother you and then, the worse things get.”

“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?”

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

“The only difference between a cult and a religion is the amount of real estate they own.”

“The price of meat has just gone up and your old lady has just gone down.”

“The richest people in the world aren’t particularly smart or happy. And the happiest people in the world aren’t particularly smart or rich.”

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

“The thing that makes my music unusual is that people only hear one kind of music all the time over the radio. It’s wallpaper to their lives. Audile wallpaper. There’s one acceptable beat and there are three acceptable chord progressions. There are five acceptable words: baby, love, tears, yat yat. Just because I don’t deal in those terms doesn’t mean I’m weird. So tell these people: I ain’t weird; I’m rational. I’m a person who can choose to write stuff like that, or choose to write stuff that includes all the notes on the piano played at once, followed by a cement truck driving over the piano, followed by a small atomic explosion. Nothing weird about that as long as you do it in a meaningful way.”

“The U.S. is a mere pup tent of a civilization. We’ve got two hundred years of stupidity behind us and we think we’re right up there with everyone else who’s been doing it for thousands of years.”

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

“The universe consists of 5% protons, 5% neutrons, 5% electrons and 85% morons.”

“The white zone is for loading and unloading only. If you gotta load or unload, go to the white zone.”

“Their stupidity does not amaze me, its when they're smart that amazes me. It's baffling whenever you find someone who's smart — incredible. Soon you'll have zoos for such things.”

“There are a lot of things that I can do to earn a living and a lot of things that I have already done to earn a living which produce the amount of capital needed to do this project. I came here to spend money on an English orchestra and record my music, so I can take it home and I can listen to it. And if somebody else likes that kind of stuff, I will make it available on a record so that they can hear it. That is my part of the public service of spending the money to make this event happen. No foundation grant, no government assistance, no corporation, no comittee. Just a crazy guy who spent the money to hire English musicians to do a concert at the Barbican and make an album for Barking Pumpkin Records.”

“There are millions of people who acquire all sorts of wonderful feelings from watching a football game and drinking a bottle of beer. It makes them really happy. Doesn’t do shit for me. But for them it’s life itself. As long as they can believe in the beer and the football, then they’ve really got something. And it’s probably more useful to them than religion. So why take it away? Why tell them what’s really going on? Let ’em be happy.”

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

“There are only two things to remember. Number one: don’t Stop, and number two: keep going!”