I always want to see films that are startling and amazing. Not just shocking. Shocking is easy to do. But startling in the way that makes you change how you think about things. Those are the movies I like the best.

My films can be considered political action against the tyranny of good taste.

"Family" this and "family" that. If I had a family I'd be furious that moral busybodies are taking the perfectly good word family and using it as a code for censorship the same way "states' rights" was used to disguise racism in the mid-sixties.

If I died tomorrow I've accomplished what I set out to do in my life. I enjoy making my movies, I enjoy doing what I do. I have a nice life.

I mean, what is prison, really, except a good bar without the liquor?

I used to run away to New York from Baltimore all the time.I would get on the Greyhound bus and tell my parents I was going to some sorority weekend. I'd even make up fake permission slips, come to New York and just ask people on the street if I could stay with them and go see midnight movies.

Fame is protection if you go to a scary place. Fame is fun. A lot of people don't say anything and you don't know they know who you are.