I was as equally influenced by Bergman as I was [low-budget sexploitation filmmaker].

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.

Every attempt through history to limit the definition of humanity has been a prelude to the subjugation, degradation, and slaughter of innocents.

You may try — but you can never imagine what it is to have a man's force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the slavery of being a girl.

The public makes it so that we have to keep assaulting each other.

The frustrating thing about Friday Night Lights is I know a lot more people would respond to the show if they saw it.

But I accepted that because God gave me other qualities and I’m grateful.

We can never lose anything that is good, never lose love or the memories of great happiness because they are true.

Reading books is good, Rereading good books is better.

It puts limits on criminals' rights to destroy unborn children without the permission of the woman.

An ad hominem attack against an individual, not against an idea, is highly flattering. It indicates that the person does not have anything intelligent to say about your message.

A handful of works in history have had a direct impact on social policy: one or two works of Dickens, some of Zola, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' and, in modern drama, Larry Kramer's 'The Normal Heart.'