Watching a movie should be like hunting. Out of context, every image of the cinema is yours for a split second. Take them before they bury it.

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.

He who opens a school door, closes a prison.

Faith to challenge equals recovery. When you learn to challenge your situation God speaks.

Some people are here on earth because they were sent to hell

Separation can make us feel helpless and powerless, like we have no control. To withstand this negative force, we must return to our inner core, and that takes work. That takes time and patience.

The reason I wrote political satire was because I thought it - politics - was important... that public policy was important. Then I transitioned into books, then into radio.

I wondered if I was just the sum of my brain scan, little dots clustered in my frontal lobe. Is that where the poems came from?.

I feel that books, just like people, have a destiny. Some invite sorrow, others joy, some both.

... after you have once ridden behind a motorcycle escort, you are never the same again

Accepting that we are angry is a healthy and appropriate response as long as we don't get stuck in it. Acknowledging it is one way of going through it.

I'm showing the younger generation your career doesn't have to be over when you're 16-years-old.