"Every great work, every big accomplishment, has been brought into manifestation through holding to the vision, and often just before the big achievement, comes apparent failure and discouragement."

"Intuition is a spiritual faculty and does not explain, but simply points the way."

"If one asks for success and prepares for failure, he will get the situation he has prepared for."

"The game of life is the game of boomerangs. Our thoughts, deeds and words return to us sooner or later, with astounding accuracy."

"We had some problems with the Howard newspaper strip, which led to problems with the Howard book, which ultimately led to the lawsuit. Marvel wouldn't pay the artist to draw it. Gene Colan and I were supposed to get a percentage of the syndicate's take for the strip. The problem was, the money came in 90 days, 120 days, six months — I don't remember how long exactly — after the strips were published. So, essentially, the artist was working for nothing up until that time, and no artist can afford to do that. [In comparison with Stan Lee and John Romita|'s Spider-Man comic strip,] Stan, as publisher of Marvel, had a regular salary coming in, and John Romita, I believe, was also on staff at the time. They didn't have quite the same problem."

"I think the circle is very abstract. I could make up stories of what the circle means to men, but I don't know if it is that conscious. I think it was a form, a vehicle. I don't think I had a sexual anthropomorphic, or geometric meaning. It wasn't a breast and it wasn't a circle representing life and eternity....I remember always working with contradiction and contradictory forms which is my idea also in life. The whole absurdity of life, everything for me has always been opposite. Nothing has ever been in the middle. When I gave you my autobiography, my life never had anything normal or in the center. It was always extremes."

"Art and work and art and life are very connected and my whole life has been absurd. There isn't a thing in my life that has happened that hasn't been extreme - personal health, family, economic situations...absurdity is the key word..."

"If you go home with someone and they don't have books, don't fuck them."

"We watched everything...A family favorite was Cry-Baby starring Johnny Depp. Whenever the John Waters film broke out in song, we would all scream and start singing, too."

"Parents should worry if their children haven't been arrested by the time they turn sixteen. Being a juvenile delinquent is a birthright and as much a part of healthy adolescence as smoking cigarettes or getting pimples."

"I stopped taking drugs when I realized that pot smelled bad and LSD trips were becoming like TV reruns. I had had enough inner journeys — I felt I knew myself well enough, thank you."

"Animal rights acitivists always say to me, "How could you kill a chicken for a movie?" Well, I eat chicken and I know the chicken didn't land on my plate from a heart attack. We bought the chicken from a farmer who advertised freshly killed chicken. I think we made the chicken's life better. It got to be in a movie, it got fucked, and then right after filming the next take, the cast ate the chicken!"

"Wouldn't you rather your kid be a drug dealer than a drug addict?"

"To me, camp is two older queens talking about Rita Hayworth under a Tiffany's lampshade."

"I've always tried to push things to the limit, but when I started, the censors to be feared were old, conservative, religious men, whereas today the censors are young, rich, liberal men who seem to be against the freedom of expression I fought for. [...] people should be able to have an opinion they don't agree with and still be friends, have a dialogue, or argue about it."

"We're husky, we're hairy, we're homosexual, and out of the second closet."

"And we can cuddle all night!"

"To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about. If someone vomits while watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation. But one must remember that there is such a thing as good bad taste and bad bad taste."

"To understand bad taste one must have very good taste."

"I would never want to film hard-core pornography, because it always looks like open-heart surgery to me."

"[I] pride myself on the fact that my work has no socially redeeming value."

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

"I'll never be able to do a sequel to Pink Flamingos because it would have to end with Divine taking a shit and the dog eating it."

"Life is nothing without a good sense of humor."

"I would never want to live anywhere but Baltimore... It's as if every eccentric in the South decided to move north, ran out of gas in Baltimore, and decided to stay. No one moves here."

"I'd never trust anyone who hadn't spent at least one night of his youth in the local jail. The more hell you raise as a teen-ager, the sweeter your memories will be."

"Waters might, once upon a time, have been a candidate to be the American Buñuel, especially when he had the raw hatred of Divine under his command..."

"All people look better under arrest."

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

"Cheer up. You never know — maybe something awful will happen tomorrow."

"The Arts, especially film, transcend all cultural barriers, hopefully offering an avenue where all people can find a common place to meet, understand each other, and nurture a safe world for all our children to grow strong within."

"Art is an ever-changing universe and we as artists need to continue to evolve. The concept of short term display spaces is echoed in the digital world, as well as, in this dimension."

"It was fun yet challenging to play the dual roles. I'm a really nice guy, and the character [of Dubious] is egocentric and hard-edged, so I had to pull out the negative aspects of me to attribute to the role."

"...to harness and directed peaceful energy from the viewers under the mountain through a twenty foot, five pointed Texas Star Vortex which was hung between the two massive exterior columns on the balcony into the historically tarnished Dallas Dealy Plaza and book depository hoping to honor John F. Kennedy's memory."

"A is for audition sense, knowing what to prepare for auditions and finding your niche; B is for business sense, submitting through Back Stage, reading Ross Reports, allocating funds every week for materials; C is for common sense, knowing how to weed out scam artists and follow your instincts, not your ego D is for driving sense, performing regularly, taking classes, practicing your craft; and E is for exit sense, which, he says, means know when to leave an audition; exit your emotions. Look for and enter the next audition fresh and enthusiastic."

"When I was eight years old, I played a story game with my younger brother and sister to help them fall asleep. The 'word-story game' was where they would choose a word and I would create a story. Acting and directing are similar to this game, where I am given the words then I fill in the life of the characters."

"Remembering my grandfather, Colonel Sweet's pride with his membership in the Sons of the American Revolution, I am proud to be an American Compatriot."

"Taking on the responsibility of portraying a real person in history, preserving his genius while demonstrating the vulnerable crumbling of his personality, I researched carefully, and gained great respect for the contributions Mr. Hughes shared with the world."

"As actors, we need public relations to campaign for our next possible role, and any media promoting our work seems positive in nature; but whether in theater or on a film set, a bad unprofessional photograph at the wrong angle may not be as flattering to some actors, and may be considered a harmful exposure."

"Reflecting on the Preamble of the United States Constitution, `We, the People...`includes all races and ethnicities, all ages and sexes, all creeds of beliefs, religions, and spiritualities, to be re-embrace and made anew in 2021. GIAA is resolute with our efforts to nuture these words...The Arts are the crossroads all societies meet."

"Anywhere I found wood I took it home and started working with it..to show the world that art is everywhere, except it has to pass through a creative mind."

"Impressionism was the name given to a certain form of observation when Monet, not content with using his eyes to see what things were or what they looked like as everybody had done before him, turned his attention to noting what took place on his own retina (as an oculist would test his own vision)."

"The habit of breaking up one's colour to make it brilliant dates from further back than Impressionism—Couture advocates it in a little book called 'Causeries d'Atelier' written about 1860—it is part of the technique of Impressionism but used for quite a different reason."

"Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend."

"My wife has a whim of iron."

"A woman's mind is cleaner than a man's—she changes it oftener."

"Darling: the popular form of address used in speaking to a person of the opposite sex whose name you cannot at the moment recall."

"Only the young die good."

"Age, like distance, lends a double charm."

"A man must love a thing very much if he not only practices it without any hope of fame and money, but even practices it without any hope of doing it well."