To me, beauty is looks you can never forget. A face should jolt, not soothe.

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.

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

My idea of an interesting person is someone who is quite proud of their seemingly abnormal life and turns their disadvantage into a career.

True success is figuring out your life and career so you never have to be around jerks.

Without obsession, life is nothing.

[My catholic education] sticked with me. It caused the rage I had to make 'Pink Flamingos.'

Being rich is not about how much money you have or how many homes you own; it's the freedom to buy any book you want without looking at the price and wondering if you can afford it.

Do we secretly idolize our imagined opposites, yearning to become the role models for others we know we could never be for ourselves?

I like hard movies; I like ones that are basically the opposite of a date movie.

The "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" hitchhiker really made people never want to hitchhike again - the hitcher, the show. Hitchhiking is always vaguely sexual.

Grace is a great mercy of God.

If you don't read you will have nothing to write.

The will is the strong blind man who carries on his shoulders the lame man who can see.

Enemies publish themselves. They declare war. The friend never declares his love.

So far I, at least, have no fault to find with implications of Hamilton's Federalism, but unfortunately his policy was in certain other respects tainted with a more doubtful tendency.

If you're at an award ceremony, you're against your mates.

The really great writers are people like Emily Brontë who sit in a room and write out of their limited experience and unlimited imagination.

Whatever happens to you, embrace it, the good and the bad equally. Death is just one more thing to be embraced.

If there is one thing of which I am most proud, it's that I made being ginger cool!

I am afraid for my health. I'm definitely burning the candle a little, at both ends, and I have to be careful about that.