Al Yankovic

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.

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

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

Pop culture's gotten much more disposable.

It's hard to force creativity and humor.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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