The first record I got, I think I stole. I was with my mother; she turned her back, and I slipped it in my coat. And I think it was 'Cry Baby' by The Bonnie Sisters. That or 'Lucille' by Little Richard.
Bergman movies were the most influential. They used to show at Goucher University, which was where my parents used to live. 'Brink of Life' was the first one I ever saw. Three pregnant women in a maternity ward and their misery - I love that. That is what I want to show at my funeral.
Marriage equality is a hustler's feeding frenzy of gold-diggers. I campaigned for marriage equality in Maryland because I believe we should have the right to it, but I personally don't want to get married. I don't want to imitate the traditions of heterosexual people. I hate weddings: they make me uneasy.
I wish something on T.V. would trouble me. Then maybe I would watch it.
My mother's brother became the undersecretary of the interior for Nixon, which did cause a little drama in my family because I was going to riots and everything, but he turned out great and gave us a nice cheque for an AIDS benefit we had for the 'Serial Mom' premiere.
I had a stage when I was 12 years old. I had a puppet show career. I wrote horror stories in camp, and all the parents called and complained.
I'd be arrested if I still smoked because I'm the one who would be changing the battery in the airplane in the lavatory to take out the smoke detector. I would've been those people they warn you against.
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.
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.
I always wanted them to look like Hollywood movies; I just didn't know how to do it.
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 think it would be fun to die onstage! Just drop dead in the middle of my show? That wouldn't be so bad.
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.
I wrote about Herschell in my book 'Shock Value,' for which I interviewed him. We became friends; I had dinner with Herschell the last year before he died. He was elderly, but his mind was perfectly intact.
I don't mind snobs, if they have a reason to be a snob.
At my age, you can go either fat or gaunt. I've gone gaunt.
Science fiction is something I never understood.
I wanted to own a junk yard as a child, you know. I used to smash cars and think, 'Oh, my God, there's been an accident.' My mother would take me to junk yards, and I look back on that and I think, 'Wow, that was really loving.'
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.'
Grade school ruined reading for me by demanding book reports for such snore-a-thons as Benjamin Franklin's biography written for children.
