Everything I was afraid of when I was growing up, I've become. I've taken on my nightmares, like the devil and the end of the world, and I've become those things.

Growing up going to Christian school and the concept that you're born a sinner and you don't really have a choice to change who you are has been hammered into my head and created the entire reason why I made art and made a band and made records called 'Antichrist Superstar.'

My goal isn't to make money, it's to try and survive and make a point.

It's my job to be the Pierrot, the clown, in the theatrical sense.

You don't look at a painting and ask if the artist was gay or straight. I think it's irrelevant in any situation - I don't care if my garbageman is gay or straight as long as he picks up the garbage.

Any artist, the work you do, if it's a painting or if it's a performance, you hope it translates to a common denominator with the people that they see something in their own life in there. Or they see something in somebody else's life. That's what's fun about sharing art.

I'd wanted to be a writer and when I came back to New York worked as a musician too, but I found my writing starting to get more and more referential to cinema.

I pretty much always knew I wanted to be a writer. I was writing goofy stories when I was 7 or 8. That was what I call 'wishful-thinking writing.' I grew up in the city and always wanted a horse, but there was no way I was getting a horse. So I wrote all these stories about kids who had horses. It's still fun entering these other worlds.