I actually picked up copies of Decline I and II at a flea market once. I walked out without paying.

The first Decline I did was out of sheer love and appreciation for the music. In 1977, it was more about bands, because punk was a new form of music. It was groundbreaking and political.

For the most part, studio movies have huge budgets. They don't do anything under 30 to 40 million. When you have that much money at stake, you have so many people breathing down your neck.

I got IRS records to finance what I wanted to do.

I like to think about society as being a flock of birds: There seems to be a common consciousness in different time periods, and the new common consciousness reacts to the old standards.

I was always into music. I think everyone is when they're a teenager, as a way to drown out the world.

I really feel kind of guilty spending 80 million dollars. People are starving in the world.

Nobody wanted to touch Decline III when they found out what it was about.

Arnold and Jamie Lee must have worked over the years with directors that did 50 takes, because I'd get like three takes or so and say, Ok, that's it, we're done.

Decline III, I funded myself, from the studio money. That, and I sold a lot of drugs. Kidding. Don't print that.

I live on this nice three acres in Hollywood.

Don’t be afraid anymore. Not of anyone. Not of anything. Nothing. Ever again. Listen to me: not ever again.

He drifted about with his head full of myths, always at least half lost in some otherland of story. Demons and wingsmiths, seraphim and spirits, he love it all.

On data: We are the drivers, not the driven.

Don't call it freedom, unless it includes the freedom to be absolutely disgusting.

Anything that's left that's remotely like wilderness should be left strictly alone. We have no business there any more. It's not going to save you to go in and cut the last old-stand forests.

Once I have the story in my head, I write it down. The illustrations usually come last.

There can be no mass movement without some deliberate misrepresentation of facts.

Far better an approximate answer to the right question, which is often vague, than the exact answer to the wrong question, which can always be made precise.

Pretty is smarter than you think

And you go into a supermarket and every tabloid is like, 'Pregnant and Alone!' Stuck in the 1950s ideal of how a woman should live her life. This brings out the fiery feminist in me.