I was in the 'Alvin and the Chipmunk' movie, which was a real bucket list item.

I believe that both Obama and Trump would describe themselves as outsiders.

New York was scarier than Baltimore ever was. It was terrible in the '70s. I'm glad they cleaned it up. I got mugged; I had to go to the hospital. Every time you went out, you got robbed. It was horrible. You can't imagine.

My early films look terrible! I didn't know what I was doing. I learned when I was doing it. I never went to film school.

Isn't that the most perverse thing you've ever heard?

I remember when I first went to the Baltimore Museum of Art and I bought this little Moreau print in the gift shop. I took it home, and I was, like, 12 years old or something.

I always wanted them to look like Hollywood movies; I just didn't know how to do it.

I wish something on T.V. would trouble me. Then maybe I would watch it.

The nightlife in Baltimore is very mixed. Any gay people I know go to the hipster bars; they don't go to the gay bars. Start your night at the Club Charles, and then you can meet people to go other places. The Charles has been Baltimore's favourite cool hipster bar forever.

I never got along in school, really - I already knew what I wanted to do. I have never in my life got a paycheck from anywhere in the world that asked if I went to school.

Good actors, actually, in real life, are shy and very quiet people a lot of the time.

I don't believe that we should never not talk to people we don't agree with politically. If you can make that person laugh, it's the first step to getting him to listen to change their mind.

I grew up in Baltimore, which is, you know, a city of extremes certainly, but my parents were very conservative. But they made me feel safe, and even though they were mortified at what I was doing, they encouraged it. I think because they thought, what else could I do?

There are schools for weird children now. There wasn't when I was young.

I think I'm probably the only person that, when the parents lent me money to make the movie, they wished I had not paid them back. They could have said 'No,' and it would have ended, and I would have gotten a real job.

At my age, you can go either fat or gaunt. I've gone gaunt.

I've been an art collector since the Sixties, and I kept it very separate from my showbusiness career. I've had art shows since the early Nineties, a museum show that travelled to four countries. I've had three or four art books; it's just another way I have to tell stories.

I have so many other things going on that if 'A Dirty Shame' is my last movie, that's OK.

I can make a movie for $5M, which used to be a routinely low, independent movie, but there's no such thing as that any more.

I read, every day, the 'Wall Street Journal''s editorials because I like to think how my smart enemy thinks.

I'm sick of '60s nostalgia. I've been to clubs in New York where it's just like the Fillmore East. And I thought I hated that then.

Fellini was a little lofty for a teenage boy, but certainly he was a huge influence.

I don't like reality TV. I don't want to look down on people.

I do take a one-week vacation every year, and I go to London in the fall.

I used to hitchhike a lot. I'd come home on the train from New York, and there'd be no cabs, but people would pick me right up and take me to my door because they recognised me. It was like a car service. I never really had a bad experience hitchhiking.

When I was young, there were bars called the 'Hungry Hole,' and in those same neighbourhoods are now gay people pushing baby carriages.

By wrecking something, it's always reinventing. All modern movements in art and music wrecked what came before, in a way - and surprised the cooler generation that was one step ahead. That's how you get ahead.

I was creating characters early. People didn't beat me up. I scared them. I hated authority. I could also get people to do things; I was quite the early director. I could make people laugh enough to get their defences down - and then brainwash them.

I'd love to sell out completely. It's just that nobody has been willing to buy.

It's still possible to make movies. Not so much on YouTube. On YouTube, you wind up with an advertising career. What movie became infamous and a hit because of YouTube? Maybe there is one. I don't know.

If I'm seeing a three-hour foreign film, I don't want to watch it in a bed.

Science fiction is something I never understood.

Putting out compilation records, buying the right to music is incredibly complicated. You have to find the writer of the song and the publisher of the song - not the singer - and make two separate deals.

You have to think of a new way to make something new. And the biggest sin - you can never try too hard. You can never look like you're just trying to shock people, 'cause that's simple. But making people laugh is the hard part.

In the beginning, my equipment, I would rent them from teamster-types, really. I don't know where they got the cameras - I think from the TV stations. But I don't know if they asked the TV stations.

My dad saw 'A Dirty Shame.' I felt bad about my father knowing what 'felching' was.

Around '62 in Baltimore, all the girls had those big hairdos. And then suddenly, a few of the really hip ones started doing their hair straight. And people panicked. And it was called going 'Joe,' meaning Joe College. And people would say, 'I don't know. Should I be 'Joe'? I can't decide.'

My 40th birthday I held in an old-age home. My 50th I had at Pravda before it opened in New York. My 60th I had at Pastis. For my 70th, I thought, 'I don't need to have a celebrity party this year. I'm going to go take my oldest, closest friends to Paris.'

My dreams have come true. I mean, everything I wanted to happen as a kid has already happened.

I don't mind snobs, if they have a reason to be a snob.

Underground, raw movies that come out of nowhere and change everything - they aren't slick-looking. But I have nothing against slick-looking as long as the scripts are funny.

Always, European art cinema has been the most threatening and the grimmest and the most transgressive, I think.

Everyone's sex life is funny except your own. Every person's is, and yours never is.

I've taught in prison; I've counseled people... I've been arrested; I've been to the psychiatrist.

I want to be in a 'Final Destination' movie.

In the 1960s, if you could save $500, you had enough to move to another city and start a new life.

I'm thrilled to have a completely new audience that I can get from Court TV, without it being my own trial. That was the only other way I would have gotten it.

They all want you to make a movie for under a million dollars, which I don't want to. I don't want to be a faux radical film-maker at 70. I did that. I don't need to do it again.

I like art. It's another way to rebel.

If I made a film today, it would certainly be on digital.