When I started making movies about weird people, I knew they were weird, I was infected with irony, and I wanted New York to notice.

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.

To stop being a victim, you have to stop thinking like a victim.

Worse is man who abandons himself

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

Until you stalk and overrun, you cannot devour anyone. -Hobbes

Every adult needs a child to teach; it’s the way adults learn.

In such misfortunes my Mother was of an heroic spirit, in suffering patiently when there was no remedy, and being industrious where she thought she could help.

If everyone would look for that uniqueness then we would have a very colorful world.

Humble in a humble state and great in greatness, I will work out the divinity that is busy within my mind.

It's impossible to speak what it is not noble to do.