Frameworks

I know this subject has been covered in the past, but my question is why use them? I'm hoping to not create a religious war... I see that frameworks would probably help you develop some things faster, but most of the time they don't do the things the way I would want them to work. If I did use one, it almost seems like I would use it to get through something until I had time to do things the way I wanted/needed to do them. There's a lot of talk about frameworks lately, and especially the Zend Framework, so I'd like to look into what it's all about. I think I might be missing out the framework issue, so I'd like to hear other people's opinions. I do like the mail, pdf, and a few other parts of the Zend Framework. I also like that it's more like a set of tools than a monolithic beast that would take a lot of memory just to load up into your application. Your thoughts? Thanks, Ray