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.

Pop culture’s gotten much more disposable.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

My hobbies just sort of gradually became my vocation.

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

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...

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 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.

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

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...

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

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.

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

It’s hard to force creativity and humor.

Probably 90 percent of my albums have polka medleys.

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

I’m very analytical, I’m very precise.

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

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

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

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...

You fake something until you’re good at 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.

There aren’t that many superstars around anymore.

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

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...

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...

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...

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...

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.

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

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

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

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...

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

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

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

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...

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 mean, I don’t write for kids.

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?

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

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

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,...