Hollywood isn't exactly dragging me, or even aware of me.

I was completely broke, so I started saying yes to everything. I said yes to a woman who approached me about shooting the Dracula ballet, even though I felt like I was probably going to sabotage it.

I'm starting to frighten myself, because I'm backsliding into my devil-may-care attitude. I'm sure it's going to catch up with me.

I've never made movies to reach millions of people.

I literally designed and built the sets myself, and I kind of liked it. I always gave myself eight weeks to do that - sometimes even 10 - and the shooting took five or six weeks.

I've been so lazy all my life. I used to literally lie on the couch, up until the age of 35, fearing that my bones were dissolving like sugar cubes, from disuse.

Those are my goals, you know. To be smart, tasteless, and feeling. Something to shoot for.

If I want to keep making films for a few more years, I probably should be willing to adapt. I've sort of evolved into the filmmaker that I am because of natural selection anyway.

Shredded feelings are the fuel that feed the machinery of melodrama. And good melodrama just has honest feelings and is honest about the way people interact.

In many relationships that I've had people just try to own the other person.

You get to have some mischief before you're basically a blackened banana, impotent, and nothing to be afraid of.

Do not be too hard, lest you be broken; do not be too soft, lest you be squeezed.

A pun, like champagne, loses its sparkle when too long drawn out. Its flash is its savor.

Being Southern and being the guy I've been all my life, I've lived more on the lighter side of life. I have a dark side, but that's not where I come from. A lot of artists like to come from that.

I don't say I'm not magnetic to try and sound self-deprecating. I'm just not. Though I actually love people. I would like to meet more people. I know no one.

I'm an American before any party preference.

If you elect a matinee idol mayor, you're going to have a musical comedy administration.

Sometimes a great wound or concussion of the head, especially which happens by falling headlong from an high place, brings a prejudice and weakness to the animal faculty, dulling the understanding

Liberals were intimidated by the Reagan administration and did not want to appear naive by talking about programs that called for government support. I just said, 'The hell with that. I'm out there.'

The coming of honor or disgrace must be a reflection of one's inner power.