Some Jungian or Freudian would tell me I'm just trying to go back to the womb... at gunpoint, if necessary.

I was completely broke, so I started saying yes to everything. I said yes to a woman who approached me about shooting the Dracula ballet, even though I felt like I was probably going to sabotage it.

I'm starting to frighten myself, because I'm backsliding into my devil-may-care attitude. I'm sure it's going to catch up with me.

I've never made movies to reach millions of people.

I literally designed and built the sets myself, and I kind of liked it. I always gave myself eight weeks to do that - sometimes even 10 - and the shooting took five or six weeks.

I've been so lazy all my life. I used to literally lie on the couch, up until the age of 35, fearing that my bones were dissolving like sugar cubes, from disuse.

Those are my goals, you know. To be smart, tasteless, and feeling. Something to shoot for.

If I want to keep making films for a few more years, I probably should be willing to adapt. I've sort of evolved into the filmmaker that I am because of natural selection anyway.

Shredded feelings are the fuel that feed the machinery of melodrama. And good melodrama just has honest feelings and is honest about the way people interact.

In many relationships that I've had people just try to own the other person.

You get to have some mischief before you're basically a blackened banana, impotent, and nothing to be afraid of.

If someone proved to me that Christ is outside the truth and that in reality the truth were outside of Christ, then I should prefer to remain with Christ rather than with the truth.

We are ready to despair too soon, we are ready to say, ‘What’s the good of doing anything?’ Hope is the virtue we should cultivate most in this present day and age.

Your reputation is what others think of you

A lot of men said they were jealous of me because my shoes excite women in a way they can't.

The meaning of your life comes through your obligations to others.

Social Security must be preserved and strengthened. But we need to be candid about the costs and willing to make the tough choices that real reform will require.

Oh dear, life is pretty tough sometimes, isn't it?

I feel like if you turn on country radio, you will find something you'll love because it's so diverse.And that's a great thing.

Where else but in America can a poor black man like Michael Jackson grow up to be a rich white woman?

I'm surprised you don't know more about magic, Sister Verna. There is a word that is magic. It can accomplish more than you might think. Maybe you have heard it before. It is the word 'please.