"How could you think of such awful things?" liberal critics always ask. "How else could I possibly amuse myself?" I always wonder.

I went to the Vatican once - it was a bad idea. I went into the bookshop and I bought hideous, pious postcards and then I asked for a receipt, and the nun said, "We don't give receipts at the Vatican." Which threw me into a rage of like, "I guess not, so you can take this money and funnel it into anti-homosexual groups!" People had to drag me out of there. It's not good for me to go into the Vatican.

I have no interest in ever making a movie I didn't write. If they were going to take my house away, then I guess I might have to. But my agent knows not to even bother sending me the scripts.

It took me a while to figure it out, but to have a real hit on Broadway, you have to get the respected Broadway people to like it. But then the production also has to appeal to the most middle-class people who know nothing about Broadway and who come to see it later.

Nothing is more impotent than an unread library.

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.

I make independent movies. I don't know how to do anything else. I don't know any other job that I could really get.