The anger I have about high school - which I do have because they discouraged every interest I ever had; actually I call it anti-education - that anger led to my career.

How come there's no terrorism with humor, which is a great way to humiliate your enemy? It's a great time for that.

Going to a sensational murder trial is the only way I can relax.

And I seek people who break rules with happiness — and not bringing pain to themselves.

Hairspray is the only movie I made that's subversive, because they're doing it in every high school in America. A man's playing a woman, and two men sing a love song to each other.

"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.

William Castle and Alfred Hitchcock were the first director-personalities. Before then, nobody in America knew what a director was.