Frank Zappa Quotes Page 5

“There are three things that smell of fish. One of them is fish. The other two are growing on you!”

“There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe, and it has a longer shelf life.”

“There is no hell. France exists.”

“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.”

“There isn’t anything weird about my music. Weird is a skeleton in the closet, wearing a rubber mask with warts all over its nose, and all that kind of shit. That’s not what I do.”

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

“There’s no reason to assume that my idea of what‘s better would really be better.”

“To me, absurdity is the only reality.”

“Tobacco is my favorite vegetable.”

“We live in a very special time right now. At no other time in history has there been such mass disillusionment in terms of reliance on governing functions. Most people don’t want to come to terms with that. It’s been proven over and over again that the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes, but most people don’t like to look at naked emperors. In the process of turning around to avert their eyes, they saw the discotheques and a few other things and latched onto them.”

“Well I think that progress is not possible without deviation. And I think that it's important that people be aware of some of the creative ways in which some of their fellow men are deviating from the norm, because in some instances they might find these deviations inspiring and might suggest further deviations which might cause progress, you never know.”

“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.”

“Well, in this world of basic stereotyping, give a guy a big nose and some weird hair and he is capable of anything.”

“When God created Republicans, he gave up on everything else.”

“Who are the brain police?”

“Why do you necessarily have to be wrong just because a few million people think you are?”

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.”

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”

“You can't always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.”

“You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of football team, or some nuclear weapons, but in the very least you need a beer.”

“You know, people are basically shitty. It’s when they prove it over and over again that it gets obnoxious.”

“You've got to be digging it while it's happening 'cause it just might be a one shot deal.”

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

“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 *sshole.”

“Children are naive — they trust everyone. School is bad enough, but, if you put a child anywhere in the vicinity of a church, you're asking for trouble.”

“Definition of rock journalism: People who can't write, doing interviews with people who can't think, in order to prepare articles for people who can't read.”

“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.”

“Gail has said in interviews that one of the things that makes our relationship work is the fact that we hardly ever get to talk to each other.”

“I detest love lyrics. I think one of the causes of bad mental health in the United States is that people have been raised on love lyrics.”

“If you end up with a boring miserable life because you listened to your mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest, or some guy on television telling you how to do your shit, then you deserve it.”