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.

As a teenager I was so insecure. I was the type of guy that never fitted in because he never dared to choose. I was convinced I had absolutely no talent at all. For nothing. And that thought took away all my ambition too.

I think the thing to do is enjoy the ride while you're on it.

Me, I'm dishonest, and you can always trust a dishonest man to be dishonest. Honestly, it's the honest ones you have to watch out for.

People say I make strange choices, but they're not strange for me. My sickness is that I'm fascinated by human behavior, by what's underneath the surface, by the worlds inside people.

I'm an old-fashioned guy... I want to be an old man with a beer belly sitting on a porch, looking at a lake or something.

Tomorrow it'll all be over, then I'll have to go back to selling pens again.

Puberty was very vague. I literally locked myself in a room and played guitar.

Life's pretty good, and why wouldn't it be? I'm a pirate, after all.

The only creatures that are evolved enough to convey pure love are dogs and infants.

I have this fear of clowns, so I think that if I surround myself with them, it will ward off all evil.

I'm shy, paranoid, whatever word you want to use. I hate fame. I've done everything I can to avoid it.

I am doing things that are true to me. The only thing I have a problem with is being labeled.

With any part you play, there is a certain amount of yourself in it. There has to be, otherwise it's just not acting. It's lying.

When kids hit one year old, it's like hanging out with a miniature drunk. You have to hold onto them. They bump into things. They laugh and cry. They urinate. They vomit.

If there's any message to my work, it is ultimately that it's OK to be different, that it's good to be different, that we should question ourselves before we pass judgment on someone who looks different, behaves different, talks different, is a different color.

I don't pretend to be captain weird. I just do what I do.

Captain Jack Sparrow is like a cross between Keith Richards and Pepe Le Pew.

Am I a romantic? I've seen 'Wuthering Heights' ten times. I'm a romantic.

My favorite color is black.

I'm always for the Indian in the cowboy movie. Always.

I pretty much try to stay in a constant state of confusion just because of the expression it leaves on my face.

Escapism is survival to me.

I always wanted to be a character actor rather than the poster boy that they tried to make me 100 years ago. An actor has a degree of responsibility to change for the audience, to give them something new each time, to surprise and not bore them.

There's a drive in me that won't allow me to do certain things that are easy.

You use your money to buy privacy because during most of your life you aren't allowed to be normal.

I think everybody's nuts.

I may have a feather duster down my pants.