You know, music is sex. It's a sensual driving mode that affects people if it's played a certain way.

There's a saying. If you want someone to love you forever, buy a dog, feed it and keep it around.

They're putting cement dust into cattle feed to make the cows heavier; the FDA knows all about it.

I'll just tell you the way it is. You ask me what time it is and I'm gonna tell you how to build a clock.

Every song is like a painting.

Hendrix was the bass player for Little Richard. We were both left-handed, but we would use a right-handed guitar held upside down and backwards. He developed my slides and my riffs. In fact he used to say, and this is documented, 'I patterned my style after Dick Dale.'

I'd rather be a Jack-of-all-trades than master of one. If I became an icon, where my whole life was music, I would probably have become a vegetable. I wouldn't be able to have all these talents I have today and be an interesting 'character.'

Surf music is actually just the sound of the waves played on a guitar: that wet, splashy sound.

I met Leo Fender, who is the guru of all amplifiers, and he gave me a Stratocaster. He became a second father to me.

When I played with Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings in Vegas, the guys used to go, 'Dick, cut it out, man! You're moving around too much on this stage. You're making us look bad!'

I was reading a magazine when I was a little kid, probably about twelve years old, and an ad said that if you sell so many jars of Noxzema skin cream, we'll sell you a ukulele. So I went out and banged on doors in the snow in Quincy, Massachusetts, where I was raised, and I sold the skin cream.

If you ask me what I'd rather be doing, well, I'd rather be home in California, watching TV, polishing my tools and working around the ranch.

The Musicians Hall of Fame is chosen by thousands of your peers. So it's the real thing.

You can't eat fish. It's 6,000 parts DDT per million all over the world, not counting radiation.

I used to surf up in Ventura County at Silver Strand; plus, I've played up there many times.

In the Shao Lin temple, they never allow you to touch the skin of a drum until you can tongue what you're going to play.

When I first played the guitar without plugging it into an amplifier, the people at Fender were blown away. They couldn't believe the sound. I said, 'See, gentlemen, the world is no longer flat.'

Gene Krupa was my big hero, and I used to play on my mother's flour cans and sugar cans with the kitchen knives, listening to the big bands on my dad's records. Gene Krupa and Harry James.

Guitar Player Magazine says Dick Dale is the father of Heavy Metal, blowing up 48 amplifiers, creating the first power amplifier.

When I started surfing, you'd hear this neat rumbling sound when you took off and go for the drop, and when the wave is lipping up over the top of you, it makes this hissing sound.

I thought of Gene Krupa's drumming, his staccato drumming. I went and put 'Misirlou' to that rhythm.

I don't claim to be a musician, I didn't go to Julliard.

My philosophy is the thicker the wood the thicker the sound, the bigger the string the bigger the sound. My smallest string is a 14 gauge.

My uncle gave me a trumpet, but I loved the Louis Armstrong sound and the Harry James sound and I played by ear and I played always soulful or very direct from the gut.

I don't live with the 'right' people. I don't want to. I don't want to live with the rich in Beverly Hills or walk the streets of Hollywood. I want to go to K-mart and get good deals.

Buddy Rich was one of the most incredible technicians in the world, on this planet, but the only people he could really impress, who knew what he was doing was another musician or another drummer.

I live like in the days of Daniel Boone, hauling water by hand. I used to have two Rolls-Royces. Now I got one. It's got four flat tires; the trunk is open, and a rat lives inside it.

My mind never left 20, because once it does, that's when you start to die.

As a little kid I had a girlfriend, and her boyfriend used to beat me up, so then I used to sing these songs, and that's what it's all about. Country music is all about your heart and your people and things like that.

I have all the rhythm in my left hand, and I use the rhythms that Gene Krupa did on his drums.

I almost had to have my leg amputated because of an infection.

When I play, I don't cheat. I played for 490,000 in Berlin, and I'll play just as hard for 100.

I used to be a mean maniac. Someone once threw a firecracker at a show and I jumped off the side of the stage and whacked 'em on the side of the head.

I've got holes in my guitar.

I learned everything by ear and played all the different instruments. So then I was able to find a guitar. That was, like, in the seventh grade. And then I didn't know how to put my fingers on all the different strings, so I had to figure out how to do it upside down and backwards, and I still play that way today.

What we perceive things to be when they come out of our mouth is not what the listener perceives it to be. They think it differently. They're not your blood. They're not your mind. You get in an argument.

Surfers were the ones who named all my songs. They'd yell out the names, and we just kept 'em.

I enjoy living like a hermit, but I cannot live like a hermit.

I try to read the audience, see what they're in the mood for.

Some guys record an album with songs that are filler. I recorded this album like it was my last.

I surfed Dana Point, San Clemente, and of course Huntington Beach. Every morning, you could find me at the hot water pipe.

Earthlings are confused, insecure. And some Earthlings have no heritage: that's what leads them to kill each other and rob 7-11 stores.

I'm going to make people happy. I'm going to make them forget about their cancer. I'm going to make them forget about their diabetes.

That's what my music does for me. It makes people happy. When I play, I thank the Lord I've never seen someone walk away from a Dick Dale dance not having a good time. That's what it's all about.

The ultimate guitar players can play every scale in the book.

The kids called me King of the Surf Guitar. I surfed sunup to sundown.

Surf music is played through a Showman amp with a Stratocaster guitar.

I grew a love for helpless, defenseless things. People would give me lions and jaguars. I had cheetahs, monkeys.

I called it Rockabilly 'cause I was rocking the strums, which you're not supposed to do.

I actually first picked up an ukulele before I picked up a guitar.