People still come to Baltimore and say, "I didn't realize you made documentaries."

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.

Don’t waste time making money ... use Cosmic Ordering.

Enjoy your own authentic stupidity rather than strive vainly to be wise.

The future influences the present just as much as the past.

Nobody thinks that there were never mechanical horses in the world. Everybody knows that there aren't really golems.

Most people think everybody feels about them much more violently than they actually do; they think other people's opinions of them swing through great arcs of approval or disapproval.

In the event that we don't want to lose the Far East and Siberia, we need a united Europe.

I'm the only person who has ever found the right way to build an autobiography.

What? You run? Coward! Stand still and die!” Percy had no intention of doing that.

I think N.Y.C. definitely had something to do with my figuring out my life path.

The first function of a book review should be, I believe, to give some idea of the contents and character of the book.