My father was a really sharp cartoonist and filmmaker. He used to tape-record the family surreptitiously, either while we were driving around or at dinner, and in 1963 he and I made up a story about a brother and a sister, Lisa and Matt, having an adventure out in the woods with animals.

I'm better than dirt. Well, most kinds of dirt, not that fancy store-bought dirt... I can't compete with that stuff.

Basically, everything I try to do is to present an alternative to what somebody else is doing.

Living creatively is really important to maintain throughout your life. And living creatively doesn't mean only artistic creativity, although that's part of it. It means being yourself, not just complying with the wishes of other people.

A woman is like beer. They look good, they smell good, and you'd step over your own mother just to get one!

I've conducted an experiment on my kids. Instead of denying them access to media, I've encouraged it. They read comic books, play Nintendo and watch way too much TV.

American culture has a lot of great moustaches in its history. Mark Twain had a great moustache, Charlie Chaplin, Ben Turpin ... but Zappa, he's got the best moustache in American history. Got the moustache, right, and he's got that little thing on his chin, I think it's called an imperial, that is, like, the coolest thing. That's like one of the great icons of the twentieth century.