Quotes by Frank Zappa

About Frank Zappa:

Frank Vincent Zappa was an American musician, songwriter, composer, and record and film producer. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa composed rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed album covers. Zappa produced almost all of the more than 60 albums he released with the band the Mothers of Invention and as a solo artist. While in his teens, he acquired a taste for 20th-century classical composers such as Edgard Varèse, Igor Stravinsky, and Anton Webern, along with 1950s rhythm and blues music. He began writing classical music in high school, while at the same time playing drums in rhythm and blues bands; he later switched to electric guitar.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Art is making something out of nothing and selling it.

Frank Zappa

Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid.

Frank Zappa

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.

Frank Zappa

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, ...

Frank Zappa

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.

Frank Zappa

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.

Frank Zappa

One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change people's minds.

Frank Zappa

No change in musical style will survive unless it is accompanied by a change in clothing style. Rock is to dress up to.

Frank Zappa

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

Frank Zappa

If you want to get laid, go to college. If you want an education, go to the library.

Frank Zappa

All the good music has already been written by people with wigs and stuff.

Frank Zappa

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

Frank Zappa

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

Frank Zappa

I searched for years I found no love. I'm sure that love will never be a product of plasticity.

Frank Zappa

Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

Frank Zappa

The United States is a nation of laws: badly written and randomly enforced.

Frank Zappa

Without deviation progress is not possible.

Frank Zappa

Most rock journalism is people who can't write, interviewing people who can't talk, for people who can't read.

Frank Zappa

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

Frank Zappa

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

Frank Zappa

Author Bio

  • NameFrank Zappa
  • Descriptionmusician and composer from the United States
  • AliasesFrank Vincent Zappa
  • BornDecember 21, 1940
  • DiedDecember 4, 1993
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionGuitarist; Singer; Composer; Voice Actor; Jazz Musician
  • AwardsGrammy Lifetime Achievement Award