“It's not enough just to do those things anymore; what you must do instead if you want success on any large scale is either figure out a way of getting yourself associated in the audience's mind wit...”

“if the main reason we listen to music in the first place is to hear passion expressed- as i've believed all my life-then what good is this music going to prove to be? what does that say about us? w...”

“They're events you remember all your life, like your first real orgasm. And the whole purpose of the absurd, mechanically persistent involvement with recorded music is the pursuit of that priceless...”

“Like almost all of Beefheart's recorded work, it was not even "ahead" of its time in 1969. Then and now, it stands outside time, trends, fads, hypes, the rise and fall of whole genres eclectic as w...”

“Like almost all of Beefheart's recorded work, [Trout Mask Replica] was not even "ahead" of its time in 1969. Then and now, it stands outside time, trends, fads, hypes, the rise and fall of whole ge...”

“The first mistake of art is to assume that it's serious.”

“And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.”

“You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.”

“The road to hell is paved with adverbs.”