Al yankovic quotes

I can bend paper clips into the shapes of small animals.

I'm obviously not a rapper, and I don't have any claims to be one, really.

I was a huge fan of 'Mad' magazine when I was 11, 12, 13 years old. I'd scour used bookstores trying to find back issues, and I'd wait at the newsstand for a new issue to come out. My life revolved around it.

One of my pet peeves is that sometimes the talents of my band get overlooked because, and it was the same problem that Frank Zappa had, with a lot of groups that use humor, people don't realize there's a lot of craft behind the comedy.

I'm just a no-good, scum sucking, nose picking, boot licking, sniveling, groveling, worthless hunk of slime.

Got a brand new semi-automatic weapon with a laser sight. Oh, I'm praying that somebody tries to break in here tonight.

I don't think there are any new media I'd like to cover.

I'm free to do what I please, I'm probably not going to do albums. Just because I think releasing tracks as singles is a better way for me to stay topical.

When I go to my live shows it's often a multigenerational audience, a family bonding experience.

I'm very analytical, I'm very precise.

I knew we were having problems when you put those piranhas in my bathtub again.

As much as people are griping about the Internet taking sales away from artists, it's been a huge promotional tool for me.

Left all my Beatle records out in the sun, got a coke bottle stuck on the end of my tongue.

I know I'm a million times as humble as thou art!

I'd rather clean all the bathrooms in Grand Central Station with my tongue than spend one more minute with you.

So I'm one of the few celebrities that got to do a repeat performance on 'The Simpsons,' which I'm very flattered by.

I do a lot of different things, sometimes at the same time, and it's very difficult to figure out where I fit.

My process for the parodies is that I get an idea for a song and then get approval from the artist and then go in and record it and probably try to get it out as soon as possible.

I think my chances of ever making it into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame are about as good as Milli Vanilli’s.

There's a lot of different ways that a song would be a challenge to parody. There are a lot of songs that would ostensibly be a good candidate for parody, yet I can't think of a clever enough idea. Some songs are too repetitive for me to be able to fashion a humorous set of lyrics around. Some songs flat-out just don't work creatively for me.

Pop culture's gotten much more disposable.

I write and write and write, and then I edit it down to the parts that I think are amusing, or that help the storyline, or I'll write a notebook full of ideas of anecdotes or story points, and then I'll try and arrange them in a way that they would tell a semi-cohesive story.

Sometimes I get, "Have you ever thought about doing real music?" I like to think the music I do is real, it just happens to be funny.

I've always known that if I recorded an album, it would come out, and people would enjoy it! Whereas if I wrote a movie script, chances are better than even that I'd just be another guy in L.A. with a movie script in his drawer.

He died a long painful death. However, you'll be happy to hear that just a few years later he was reincarnated as Shirley MacLaine.

That's a big part of my life - doing things that I'm not prepared to do. Doing things that I don't know how to do, and keep doing them until I get good at them. I always try to put myself out of my comfort zone and out of my depth, and hopefully somewhere along the line I'll catch up.

You don't need to be defined by your job.

When I was a kid, I thought I was going to be an architect, because when I was 12 years old I had a guidance counselor that convinced me that that was the best career choice for me.

Velvet Elvis never puts on weight.

I don't like to label myself. I know I'm very hard to pigeonhole.

Many years ago I found out something about hamburgers that really grossed me out. You may not know this, so I hope I don’t make you sick, but it turns out hamburgers are actually made out of dead cows. I am not making this up. Needless to say, as soon as I discovered that, I gave up meat entirely.

You can play some schlock like New Kids On the Block.

The music has always been my bread and butter, and I've focused more of my attention on that.

I'm always a little leery about doing shows where I'm not the headliner because when I first started playing in 1982 I opened for Missing Persons and got pelted for 45 minutes. After that, I made the decision to headline no matter what, even if I was playing to seven people. I wanted people to be there to see me.

By the time I'm in the studio recording my parody, 10,000 parodies of that song are on YouTube.

I don't really look at myself as the kind of person who craves attention, but I've never been to therapy so there's probably a lot of stuff about myself that I don't know.

There are probably a few library fines I haven't paid yet, but I'm a pretty clean-cut guy overall.

Some people want to advertise their weirdness, and spread it out, that's not me.

I'll bet every great thinker and leader we've got Could see all kinds of things other people could not! So then why get upset if somebody like me Tries to look at the world just a bit differently?

You make me wanna staple bagels to my face, then remove them with a pitchfork.

In the '80s, I was the only game in town, I was the only one getting that kind of exposure in any rotation on MTV. Now with internet culture it seems like everyone is doing music parodies. And they're not all good!

Every night for dinner we had a big chunk of dirt.

It doesn't take a military genius to see we'll all be crispy critters after World War III.

As a wise man once said, “April Fools Day is for amateurs. You NEVER need an excuse to mess with people's heads.”

My brothers and sisters hated me because I was an only child.

People never ask people doing serious music, 'Do you ever think about doing funny music?'

My velvet Elvis means the world to me. Although he may not be worth much dough, he means more to me than some old Rembrandt or Van Gogh.

My personal taste doesn't enter into it a lot when I make my decisions as to what to parody.

I suppose I had my rock star fantasies while I was singing into my hairbrush in the bathroom mirror, but I never really consciously said, 'OK, this is what I'm going to do for a living and I'm going to be Weird Al.'

When I started out, I didn't feel like I was really accepted in the music or comedy communities, and I was somewhere on the edge, but now I feel like I'm accepted in both, which is extremely gratifying.

I've learned how to use my spam filter pretty effectively.

I don't watch anything on a regular basis - I tend to binge-watch things.

So that's why one of my rules of parody writing is that it's gotta be funny regardless of whether you know the source material. It has to work on its own merit.

I was abducted by some aliens from space who kind a looked like Jamie Farr.

My wife went off with Elvis.

I can't get too offended when somebody parodies me.

Like, I have had moments, which I think most people have, where you'll be watching TV, and it'll be interrupted by some tragic event, and you'll actually find yourself thinking, 'I don't want to hear about this train being derailed! What happened to 'The Flintstones'?'

You fake something until you're good at it.

It was difficult to get into my friends' rock bands when I was a teenager. They somehow didn't see the need for an accordion player. That's when I realized that I had to find my own path in life.

One of the hardest things I've had to deal with in my career is keeping my material topical even though I only release albums every three or four years.

My hobbies just sort of gradually became my vocation.

Boys like Peter are afraid of alot of things, like nuclear annihilation and flunking algebra, but they're not afraid of wolves.

I'm watching the charts every week and hoping something will pop into my head.

As my father used to tell me, the only true sign of success in life is being able to do for a living that which makes you happy.

Kind of wish I was dead. Maybe, I'll blow my brains out, mama, or maybe I'll go bowling.

When I swore that you're getting more and more beautiful everyday. Well, I was only kidding, honey.

At this point I've got a bit of a track record. So people realize that when 'Weird Al' wants to go parody, it's not meant to make them look bad... it's meant to be a tribute.

How can you get bored if the audience is cheering and laughing at something you're doing?

I'm very analytical, I'm very precise. I mean, I don't write for kids.

A lot of rap songs don't usually have a lot of melody per se.

You still have Top 40 radio now, but it's 40 different stations. There aren't many hits that everybody knows, and there aren't many real superstars.

I'm a music fan, and I can listen to the radio, or music, without thinking, "How am I going to screw this up?" [Laughs] If I'm really actively trying to think of a parody, then I'll have my antenna out, and be a little more proactive about it.

In the '80s, I was putting out an album virtually every year, I think mostly based on fear - that if I didn't, people would soon forget about me.

My own personal tastes don't really have an effect on whether song is a parody target or not. But having said that, I try to pick songs that I actually like because I realize that I have to live with these songs for a long time, from when I'm working on them in the studio to possibly playing them onstage for the rest of my life. So I try not to pick songs that I know would drive me crazy.

I have a long-standing history of respecting artists' wishes.

Maybe I'll make a huge color tapestry from my belly button lint.

As it turns out, there is a thing called the Internet, and stuff does go out there whether the suits like it or not.

I try not to go the obvious route all the time, but sometimes the most obvious is actually the best.

Ever since the day you left me, I've been so miserable, my dear. I feel almost as bad as I did when you were still here.

If something is good enough, it can be out there and people will see it.

People that were a little nerdy in high school would look up to me and know it gets better.

You got me stranded on the bungee tower of love.

I enjoy all kinds of music. But it is kind of strange when I do parodies, instead of setting up drums and guitar amps.

You can try on our suede underwear if you choose. Do what you want, but don't step on my blue suede shoes.

There are a lot of songs that would ostensibly be a good candidate for parody, yet I can't think of a clever enough idea.

I was able to come up with a couple articles for the magazine, I was able to solicit help from a bunch of my friends to contribute pieces: Patton Oswalt, Seth Green, Emo Phillips, Chris Hardwick, John Hodgman, and more. It's very much a "Weird Al" themed issue, so I'd like to think that there's a lot of "Weird Al" flavor throughout but I think it'd be generous really to call me an editor.

I mean, I hate to gloat, but I'm extremely satisfied with my position in life and the way things have worked out for me.

It becomes more important to me as time goes on to make every album the best thing I've ever done, so it's a lot of self-imposed pressure that also kind of slows me down a bit.

In a genre where most of the artists are one-hit wonders, I've been able to hang around longer than most "serious" acts. I pride myself in being a very talented leech.

I can't say enough good things about my band. I feel very fortunate that I found them when I did, very early in my career. Not only are they just great, nice guys; they're some of the best musicians you're likely to find. They do everything from gangsta rap to polka music and every genre in between. It's amazing.

I have very mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I’m concerned that the rampant downloading of my copyright-protected material over the Internet is severely eating into my album sales and having a decidedly adverse effect on my career. On the other hand, I can get all the Metallica songs I want for FREE! WOW!

I'm still a geek on the inside, that's the important thing.

You slammed my face down on the barbecue grill, now my scars are all healing, but my heart never will.

I've done a movie and a TV series, and someday I'd like to do a successful movie and a successful TV series. That would be nice.

If I could find the right kind of property, get tied in with the right movie, I'd love to be involved, but I just find it hard to be motivated to do another screenplay right now.

If you want to avoid heated arguments, never discuss religion, politics, or whether the toilet paper roll should go over or under.

As a kid, I certainly never thought I would get to spend my life doing something fun.

A lot of artists have really been supportive over the years.

The irony is of course that my career has lasted a whole lot longer than some of the people I've parodied over the years.

Whenever I do a parody it's not meant to make you hate anybody's music really.

It fit pretty nicely into my schedule because we'd pretty much finished the bulk of promotion for Mandatory Fun and were just getting geared up for the World Tour so this was a nice time for me to be working on it.

Not any specific one, but I was a huge fan of Frank Jacobs, I guess he wrote the plurality of the song parodies for MAD, Sam Hart, a few others, but that was also where I was first exposed to the art form of song parodies.

I'm stranded all alone in the gas station of love, and I have to use the self service pump.

I think that nerds, if you want to call them that, have only gotten more hip and assimilated into the culture.

That's something the kids should know about. Reading is a gateway to witchcraft and lesbianism.

It's hard to force creativity and humor.

I like the guitar-driven music of Nirvana at its peak. At that point, I thought there was a lot of really exciting music coming out.

In fact, when I come up with an idea for a parody I try to resist the urge to Google the idea to see if someone has done it already because the answer is almost always, "Yes, of course they have, they've thought of it!"

I'm an ugly girl, My face makes you hurl, Sad I have it, I should bag it. Acne everywhere, Unwanted facial hair. I'm a relation to Frankenstein's creation.

There aren't that many superstars around anymore.

He put Ben Gay inside my jock strap and filled my tooth paste tube up with glue.

I love the way they run in fright when I turn on the kitchen light. And when I squish them on the ground, they make a pleasant crunchy sound.

I did have a child, and I was reading a lot of picture books to her, but at the same time writing a children's book was something that I'd been wanting to do for many years, pretty much since the start of my career.

Nows the time to go for all the gusto you can grab. You'll have plenty of time to be low-key when you're laid out on the slab.

I'll be mellow when I'm dead.

Well I've made no secret of my life long love of MAD Magazine, it's probably my first and greatest influence in terms of my comic sensibilities. I've known John [Ficarra] for many years, and we've been friends. About four or five months ago, at a dinner in New York, John made the very nice offer of my being guest editor for an issue of MAD and I thought about it for about half a nanosecond and decided that was a pretty good idea.

I make charts of songs that are good candidates, good targets, so to speak. Then I try to come up with ideas for parodies. And 99% of those ideas are horrible.

It's hard to really articulate what the parameters are that make one song parody-able and another song not, but if I can come up with a good enough idea for it, I go for it, and if not, then I have to move on.

If money can't buy happiness, then I guess I'll have to rent it.

Until you came along I never dated anyone this low on the food chain.

Probably 90 percent of my albums have polka medleys.

I know now that everything I write, I'm going to put out, and I'll have to live with it for the rest of my life.

What kind of morons do you have working at newspapers in Austin that would base an entire review of an artist's performance on whether or not they had a good seat?

People say releasing an album is like giving birth, but it’s more like having a gallbladder operation.

Didn't have Nintendo, we just poured salt on snails.