I've always tried to keep reinventing myself and to keep appealing to young people and when I go to colleges now and do my spoken-word show it's astounding to me how I get older and the audience gets younger. To me, that's the best compliment. That's better than money, that's better than anything.

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.

Humor is how you change people's opinions, and if you can make someone laugh, they'll listen, even if they hate you.

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.

I love to read about anger. A "feel bad" book always makes me feel good. And no other novel in the history of literature is more depressing than Christina Stead's The Man Who Loved Children.

I think it's all independent films. There aren't any! If they were looking for me when I was making Polyester, then it'd be perfect, but they're not. I'm not looking for that. TV is much bigger and better now; far more people see it.

I always say you need something weird on your face and some good shoes and nobody looks in the middle.