I'm not a separatist, I'm friends with some people who voted for Trump, not many. Nobody has the nerve to tell me, but a few have.

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.

My fear of endings too often blocks my hope of beginnings.

The sense of community is that feeling of togetherness that brings us comfort. We are all alone in the world, so we strive to form bonds with others to eliminate that sense of feeling alone.

You know that feeling when you wake up in the morning and you're excited for the day? That's one of my main goals in life.

Let us take things as we find them: let us not attempt to distort them into what they are not... We cannot make facts. All our wishing cannot change them. We must use them.

I feel very happy to be living in Berkeley because there are a lot of people who are politically active here.

I still remember Botvinnik's reaction to each of my games, right from the opening moves. At first he would express amazement, then annoyance, and, finally irritation.

That man cannot possibly be called a Christian, who does not pray.

The Great Architect of the universe built it of good firm stuff.

I wake the dead. I bring Jackie Robinson and the Roosevelts to life. Who do you think Im trying to wake up?

Words move, music moves Only in time; but that which is only living Can only die. Words, after speech, reach Into the silence. Only by the form, the pattern, Can words or music reach The stillness.