Al Yankovic quotes:

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

I cut my teeth playing rock songs on the accordion when I was a teenager and my friends always thought that was extremely amusing. I think that was the genesis of my polka medleys, because every rock song I played on the accordion just sounded like a polka and my friends thought it was funny. So that was a joke that I continue up to this very day.

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.

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

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?

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.'

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.

I don't want to pooh-pooh modern pop. I appreciate that as well, but my personal favorite kind of music is guitar-based rock. I like grunge and garage bands and alternative music, but that's more my personal taste.

You got me stranded on the bungee tower of love.

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

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

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.

Somebody will come up to me after a show and have me sign their arm, and the next time I see them my autograph has been permanently inscribed on their arm.

I like to think that I've gotten better at what I do. I spend more time and pay more attention to detail album after album. But pretty much it's stayed the same.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

It's hard to force creativity and humor.

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

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 guess I lost a little bit of self-esteem that time that you made it with the whole hockey team.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Probably 90 percent of my albums have polka medleys.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

Why of course it's unlikely!' I said. 'Oh, by far!The awesome-est things in the world often are!

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.

There aren't that many superstars around anymore.

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

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?''

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.

Velvet Elvis never puts on weight.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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?'

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

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.

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.

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.

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 I'm equally as abusive as the editors normally are for the "Letters and Tomatoes" column, which is the fan mail part of MAD Magazine and an ongoing feature.

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

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

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.

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

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

My hobbies just sort of gradually became my vocation.

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

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.

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

I'd like to be able to be more topical and timely and more of-the-moment and I think the way to do that is, instead of waiting until I have twelve songs to release all at once, just to release them as I come up with them.

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.

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

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 can't get too offended when somebody parodies me.

I decided that I wanted to be a voice on every animated cartoon in the history of the world - even shows that haven't been on the air for a very long time, that's going to be harder to pull off.

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.

I've always enjoyed animation and voiceover work. That's something that I've been proactive about.

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

I mean, I don't write for kids.

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.

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

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

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

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

Buy our album, were Nirvana, a garage band from Seattle. Well, it sure beats raising cattle.

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

The window doesn't open, the fan is broke, and my face is turning blue. I haven't been in a crowd like this since I went to see the Who.

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

No Joni Mitchell 8 track tapes in my car.

Take down those naked pictures of Ernest Borgnine.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

A lot of my cartoon voices are basically just variations on my natural voice.

I tend to enunciate pretty well. It's always seemed that my voice is one of those voices that people can recognize pretty easily - which has been a bit of a drawback for some characters because you're supposed to lose yourself in the character, but sometimes people look at a character and go "Oh, it's 'Weird Al.'"

I think my chances of getting into the Rock 'N' Roll Hall Of Fame are about as good as Milli Vanilli's.

Right now I'm listening to a lot of Top 40 music, because THAT'S MY JOB.

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.

Beans, beans, the magic legumes - the more you ingest, the more you consume.

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

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

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