Quotes By Don Van Vliet

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.

I'm interested in playing, not working.

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

I have no neighbours other than animals and Joshua Trees.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The stars are matter, we're matter, but it doesn't matter.