I probably would have made [films] anywhere. Every city has something they're ashamed of. I would have made films about it and turned it into something positive.

Maybe there is no better novel in the world than Denton Welch's In Youth Is Pleasure. Just holding it in my hands, so precious, so beyond gay, so deliciously subversive, is enough to make illiteracy a worse social crime than hunger.

I think middle America has changed very, very much. I think people are way more open-minded. I think - I think it's because the Internet. I think they're exposed to so much. All the men talked about how much they love their wife, which I don't hear all the time in art communities.

Don’t sleep with people who don’t read.

I used to joke that I was trying to sell out, and nobody would buy me.

Aren't maids the ultimate art critics?

There are little things that get on my nerves, like people who have reading material in their powder room. When you go in someone’s house, and next to the toilet they have a huge basket of magazines, I find that repellent. I recommend against straining while reading.