For years I didn’t get the music. I’d slam my fists in anger over those who’d say how Beefheart knew. Funny how often those things you come to like among the most are ones that make you angry to begin with. Accumulation of a grime.

“There is only the slightest movement of the fingers that makes the v-sign different from the Nazi salute. Always watch that.”

“They’re about to poke their genitals into our cream cheese moon right now. That’s my eye; the moon is part of me. Why don’t they poke it in the sun? They’re not very daring.”

“I don’t think there’s any way you can *know* music. The minute you *know* it, you stop playing, and the minute a person stops playing, the music isn’t playing anymore.”

“For instance, the English language is the only language that has an *i* before *e* except after *c*. What’s before an *i*? Before my eyes is a sea. But the *c* I see is a sea. I’m not that word-oriented. I’m trying to use words like music so that they don’t take your mind anywhere that I want them to.”

“It’s hard to use the English language. 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.”

“There are only forty people in the world and five of them are hamburgers.”

“I was able to turn myself inside out, and that’s all I’m trying to do.”

BONUS: 2x Beefheart on Letterman (worth watching in full)