Quotes from Sharon Needles

I've always said that punk is a time and money thing. You can only be punk if you're poor and you're young. It's for the poor, it's for the young.

I like money but I love performance art and it goes hand in hand. I'm not the 'Titanic,' I'm 'The Rocky Horror Picture Show.' I'm not a blockbuster, I'm a cult classic. I think my strong but cult-like fanbase expects me to challenge norms.

I've always loved Salem, and I love the title of Scream Queen.

I think that the attraction to camp is its irreverence, it's strange, it in no way reflects reality while using real characters.

In the entertainment industry women are often judged. They judge bigger women, they judge black women, and older women too. We just don't do that in drag. Drag is open to everyone, regardless of gender, body shape or age.

The great thing about being a woman is the power of reinvention.

Before my time on 'RuPaul's Drag Race,' Halloween was my favorite day of the year since I was a little kid. It's the day we worship the macabre and live vicariously through the costumes that we wear.

I love celebrities, and I love the concept of fame, but it took me getting fame to realize that it doesn't exist, which was kind of a bummer. Fame is great if you're not famous, because it seems like this elusive impossible dream world. And it's not. It's a fancy word that managers and producers make up so they can keep hawking you for more money.

I remember when I wore UFO raver jeans in the 90s. Or my JNCOs! I miss my JNCOs.

Politics remind me a lot of 'RuPaul's Drag Race.' It's real but it isn't.

I'm kind of a hokey-jokey, campy idiot in black lipstick, but when it comes to my music, I take it very seriously.

When most kids were hiding their eyes or cowering under the covers, I was three inches away from the television when horror movies were played.

Any younger person - let's say if you're over the age of 30, Pride is a great excuse to go day-drinking. But no one forgets their first Pride and how much they felt that they were included and that the future was bright.

Discrimination must always be drawn out, like venom from the wound.

Well I grew up in a small town in Iowa and there weren't a lot of imaginative and fun outlets for kids of my caliber, so pretty much my mom's closet and any large pieces of fabric in the Halloween box were my favorite toys.

On 'PG-13,' the way I wrote that is that I would get my tracks ahead of time and then I would write for them, and I wrote fairly quickly.

Most American adults know what a drag queen is, but as they're portrayed in films like 'Dressed to Kill' and 'Silence of the Lambs.'

If anyone boos you offstage, that is simply applause from ghosts.

It has always been my aim to live everyday like Halloween by celebrating individuality and creative freedom within a world of horror.

Not to be rude to my sisters, but I don't listen to drag music. I listen to everything from punk to Italo disco to Appalachian country music, but I don't know what their records sound like. I hardly listen to my own records. I'm like Cher!

Call Me On The Ouija Board' is homage not just to horror movies involving children, but my favorites as a child.

I never hate my bullies from high school. I actually kind of appreciate them. If it wasn't for that boot camp training of how the world treats gay people and especially drag queens, I don't know if I would have survived as well as I have.

I come from what we call the pre-'Drag Race' drag world where I didn't start doing this with aspirations of being a reality television star, or this going any further than the small smoky bars of Pittsburgh.

Drag really isn't just about exaggerating and celebrating femininity. Some drag queens want to look like monsters, some drag queens want to look like hot dogs. Really what it is is just dipping your toes in all the swimming pools of identity and allowing yourself. Because society really tries to compartmentalize humans in a certain way.