Humor is how you change people's opinions, and if you can make someone laugh, they'll listen, even if they hate you.

It wasn't until I started reading and found books they wouldn't let us read in school that I discovered you could be insane and happy and have a good life without being like everybody else.

Don’t sleep with people who don’t read.

My idea of an interesting person is someone who is quite proud of their seemingly abnormal life and turns their disadvantage into a career.

True success is figuring out your life and career so you never have to be around jerks.

Without obsession, life is nothing.

[My catholic education] sticked with me. It caused the rage I had to make 'Pink Flamingos.'

Being rich is not about how much money you have or how many homes you own; it's the freedom to buy any book you want without looking at the price and wondering if you can afford it.

Do we secretly idolize our imagined opposites, yearning to become the role models for others we know we could never be for ourselves?

I like hard movies; I like ones that are basically the opposite of a date movie.

The "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" hitchhiker really made people never want to hitchhike again - the hitcher, the show. Hitchhiking is always vaguely sexual.

I know a feeling like that only comes once in a lifetime, and I think you should follow your heart’s desires. I believe in love, and I know love conquers all.

There's an old adage, " he said, "translated from the ancient Coptic, that contains all the wisdom of the ages -- "Life is life and fun is fun, but it's all so quiet when the goldfish die.

We demand that big business give people a square deal in return we must insist that when anyone engaged in big business honesdy endeavors to do right he shall himself be given a square deal.

I think when I dropped The Eulogy is when it became more [about] feedback because that's when Pitchfork wanted to review it and things like that.

Half the time I don't even think about it, I just throw something on because I'm so late or so busy.

I could have screamed, but I didn’t. I could have fought, but I didn’t. I just lay there and let it happen, watching the winter-white sky go gray above me.

Calling is a 'yes' to God that carries a 'no' to the chaos of modern demands. Calling is the key to tracing the story line of our lives and unriddling the meaning of our existence in a chaotic world.

Am I a myth? Am I a legend? Or am I a phenomenon?

Wanting to work is a luxury; having to work is not.

However often marriage is dissolved, it remains indissoluble. Real divorce, the divorce of the heart and nerve and fiber, does not exist, since there is no divorce from memory.