The amazing thing about Freak Out! was that there was nothing quite like it in rock 'n roll at the time. It was really simultaneously crude and ugly, and incredibly sophisticated. The Beatles were funny, but there was nothing with the kind of sneer that you could feel in the music of Frank Zappa.

First you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women.

English? Who needs that? I'm never going to England.

I went to Bali, and I was in a small village, and somebody who was with me showed a woman a little figurine of Bart and asked: 'Do you know who this is?' And she said: 'Mickey Mouse.'

Today is the first day of the rest of your short, brutish existence as a sentient creature before being snuffed out into utter nothingness for all eternity.

Everybody doesn't have to get every joke. People really appreciate not being condescended to.

I went through a phase where people would introduce me at parties as a cartoonist, and everybody felt sorry for me. 'Oh, Matt's a cartoonist.' Then people further feeling sorry for me would ask me to draw Garfield. Because I'm a cartoonist, draw Snoopy or Garfield or something.