Frank Zappa
118 quotes
Biography
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, songwriter, guitarist, conductor, actor, satirist, filmmaker, and activist. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed rock, pop, jazz, jazz fusion, orchestral and musique concrète works; he additionally produced nearly all the 60-plus albums he released with his band the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist.
"So many books, so little time."
"Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible."
"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."
"If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library."
"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."
"Interviewer: 'So Frank, you have long hair. Does that make you a woman?'Frank Zappa: 'You have a wooden leg. Does that make you a table?"
"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."
"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."
"There's a big difference between kneeling down and bending over."
"Take the Kama Sutra. How many people died from the Kama Sutra as opposed to the Bible? Who wins?"
"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."
"I think it is good that books still exist, but they do make me sleepy."
"On a personal level, Freaking Out is a process whereby an individual casts off outmoded and restricting standards of thinking, dress, and social etiquette in order to express creatively his relationship to his immediate environment and the social structure as a whole."
"If your children ever find out how lame you really are, they’ll murder you in your sleep."
"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. Forget I mentioned it. This song has no message. Rise for the flag salute."
"The things that were happening in 1955 were cosmic … in terms of music history."
"Scientology, how about that? You hold on to the tin cans and then this guy asks you a bunch of questions, and if you pay enough money you get to join the master race. How's that for a religion?"
"I consider that the building materials are exactly the same as what anybody else makes the thing out of. It's just the way they look at those materials is perhaps a narrower perspective. Time and those waves are at the disposal of anyone who wants to use them."
"Classical musicians go to the conservatories, rock´n roll musicians go to the garages."
"I think that if a person doesn't feel cynical then they're out of phase with the 20th century. Being cynical is the only way to deal with modern civilization — you can't just swallow it whole."
"Being interviewed is one of the most abnormal things that you can do to somebody else. It's two steps removed from the Inquisition."
"I don't give a fuck if they remember me at all."
"Every socialistic type of government… produces bad art, produces social inertia, produces really unhappy people, and it's more repressive than any other kind of government."
"I'm probably more famous for sitting on the toilet than for anything else that I do."
"I'll tell you what classical music is, for those of you who don't know. Classical music is this music that was written by a bunch of dead people a long time ago. And it's formula music, the same as top forty music is formula music. In order to have a piece be classical, it has to conform to academic standards that were the current norms of that day and age … I think that people are entitled to be amused, and entertained. If they see deviations from this classical norm, it's probably good for their mental health."