Captain Beefheart

I'm interested in playing, not working.

I don't know anything about music.

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

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

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

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

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

I don't do lullabyes.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I have no neighbours other than animals and Joshua Trees.