Don Van Vliet Quotes

I'd never just want to do what everybody else did. I'd be contributing to the sameness of everything.

Bob Dylan impresses me about as much as... well, I was gonna say a slug but I like slugs.

Johnny Rotten. He's a big fan of mine. I used to see him out in the audience in England and he'd stand up and holler. He's funny. Smart too, and a nice guy. Don't think he's a jerk because he isn't.

When I see a dolphin, I know it's just as smart as I am.

You can tell by the kindness of a dog how a human should be.

There are only forty people in the world and five of them are hamburgers.

A carrot is as close as a rabbit gets to a diamond.

It's not worth getting into the bullshit to see what the bull ate.

I don't want to sell my music. I'd like to give it away because where I got it, you didn't have to pay for it.

I think people have had too much to think and ought to flex their magic muscles. It takes awhile to get oriented to what I do, but people seem to be able to hear it if they give it a chance. I'd never just want to do what everybody else did. I'd be contributing to the sameness of everything.

I like the blues..... but I like aqua marine just as much.

Art is rearranging and grouping mistakes.

I don't like getting out when I could be painting. And when I'm painting, I don't want anybody else around.

The largest living land mammal is the absent mind.

James Brown is important because he decorates the clock correctly and he's good with lower mathematics. Don't get me wrong - he's good.

If you want to be a different fish, jump out of school.

The wind is a very difficult sound to get. It's always changing.

I would never kill a living thing, although I probably have inadvertently while driving automobiles.

I'd rather play a tune on a horn, but I've always felt that I didn't want to train myself. Because when you get a train, you've got to have an engine and a caboose. I think it's better to train the caboose. You train yourself, you strain yourself.

You can almost judge how screwed up somebody is by the kind of toilet paper they use. Go in any rich house and it's some weird coloured embossed stuff.

I don't look like a desert person because I stay indoors most of the day and fool around at night. That's what the desert animals do - they don't have a tan either.

The stars are matter, We're matter, But it doesn't matter.

I don't even know what sound is, much less what it's for. It isn't to make money that's for sure. I've never made any.

It makes me itch to think of myself as Captain Beefheart. I don't even have a boat.

Be kind, man - don't be mankind.

I think that men has the most highly developed intelligence. I think men get so intelligent that they're stupid.

I needed to purge myself of all the attention my parents had given me - I wasn't neglected enough as a child.

We see the moon, don't we? So it's our eye. Animals see us, don't they? So we're their animals.

If you got ears, you gotta listen.

Beatle bones and smokin' stones the dry sands fall.

An audience can really lift you right up off the stage.

I think most people try to get others to see through their eyes.

Earth ... God's golf ball.

Man has done a lot to make himself dangerous and animals get the worst of all of it. But then, man too is an animal.

I live in a Mobile Home - I've never had a house, except once; I rented a log cabin.

I think Shakespeare is really the one. Words as music and music as words. Everything he wrote was good, which is really frightening.

But I have been in some very beautiful churches, then I've looked outside and seen people starving to death.

With my voice and my band, I can do anything.

That Sid Vicious was obviously a schizophrenic, kind of a mean one too.

We're all colored, or you wouldn't be able to see anyone.

I don't think artists are made, I think they're born.

The earth is Godʹs golf ball.

I would say that it's an awfully overrated aspirin and very similar to the old people's Disneyland.

I'm interested in playing, not working.

Most of modern rock and roll is a product of guilt.

If you want to be a different fish, you've got to jump out of the school.

I don't do lullabyes.

I have no neighbours other than animals and Joshua Trees.