John Waters Quotes

Dreamland Studios then was my bedroom at my parents' house, mostly [starring] people who were in my high school. They look straight at the camera; they're uncomfortable doing it. So, are [early movies] good? No.

I built my [early] career on negative reviews. There was a cultural war going on, the '60s was going on. All the film critics were square. They hated my movies. You could never have that happen today. Critics are way too hip.

Not wanting anyone to pop my bubble by speaking to me, I immediately began reading Lesbian Nuns, and that did the trick. No one attempted small talk.

I respect everything I make fun of.

Our assholes will be clean but we must never wash our hands. Our immune systems will be strengthened by our being dirty. Not filthy. Just mildly grimy. Filthy fingernails have always been a favorite fashion accessory of mine. Especially when you place your hands in the prayer positions. Matter of fact, I urge all my followers to forgo nail polish permanently and replace it with expertly applied soot. The nonexistent gods above will ignore our prayers better this way.

The good guys in my movies mind their own business and they don't judge other people. And the bad guys are jealous, they judge other people without knowing the whole story, they want all the attention and they're mean spirited. So I think my films are politically correct in a weird way.

I also hate those holidays that fall on a Monday where you don't get mail, those fake holidays like Columbus Day. What did Christopher Columbus do, discover America? If he hadn't, somebody else would have and we'd still be here. Big deal.

When they throw the water on the witch, she says, "Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness". That line inspired my life. I sometimes say it to myself before I go to sleep, like a prayer.

I always feel bad when I meet celebrities and I can just tell every single thing about their personal life, I just say, "Well, they don't have friends. Or a therapist." Once you have both, you don't have to share everything with people, because then you don't have a private life, and then you're, I guess, a workaholic.

The only way I've learned to change anyone's mind politically is to make them laugh. My whole career has been about that.

I'm the smartest at 8 A.M. I wake up at 6, drink three cups of Awake Tazo Tea and read five newspapers. I have to think up something every day, Monday to Friday.

Remember: you must participate in the creative world you want to become part of.

Aren't maids the ultimate art critics?

Shutting down governments on your computer is just as much as fun as going to a riot at Yale.

Which she makes no move to clean up, I'm not sure what

There is right and there is wrong, I have NEVER been wrong.

I would never do hard-core pornography, because it looks too much like open-heart surgery.

People always ask me what I'm doing on the subway, but I love it! Sometimes I like to ride in the front car and look out the window at the rats.

When I was young, no one wanted to be one; now even the President of the United States would call himself an outsider. So now I'm for insiders.

I liked speed. I was on black beauties all the time. Nothing bad happened to me. I didn't become a drug addict because I always had to make a movie. We weren't stoned when we made them; I was stoned when I made movies up. I did them all.

You should want to be rich at 40, at 20 you should want to kill the rich; it's the right of youth

My favorite characters are people who think they're normal but they're not. I live in Baltimore, and it's full of people like that. I've also lived in New York, which is full of people who think they're crazy, but they're completely normal.

Pot came first when I was young. But I did the work. It wasn't a battle of what came first. They went together like "love and marriage, horse and carriage!"

Being a traditionalist, I'm a rabid sucker for Christmas. In July, I'm already worried that there are only 146 shopping days left.

When I started my goal was to make a successful underground movie. I started making movies in the mid-60s. Underground cinema then only lasted about two or three years.

Get on the fashion nerves of your peers, not your parents - that is the key to fashion leadership.

Well cult is a word you would never say in Hollywood. In any film business, if you're trying to get your next film made, you would never say, "Oh, my last film was a cult film." I'd say, "Oh great, well I hope this one isn't!"

I hitchhiked at high school. My parents thought was a perfectly normal thing to do even though God knows I got blown a lot of times riding home from school.

A psychiatrist once told me early in treatment, "Stop trying to make me like you," and what a sobering and welcome smack in the face that statement was. Yet somehow, every day of my life is still a campaign for popularity, or better yet, a crowded funeral.

I'm certainly not going to tell other people what they should do with their own personal lives. I think it's certainly easier for a director to be out. The public is not going to see a movie because the director is gay or straight. It's maybe a little harder for an actor or actress because of, you know, the love roles and stuff. But gay people have been impersonating heteros in the movies for years. So, hopefully, that is becoming less of an issue. I think it would have been really great if a gay person had played a gay person. That's brave!

I have no interest in ever making a movie I didn't write. If they were going to take my house away, then I guess I might have to. But my agent knows not to even bother sending me the scripts.

It wasn't until I started reading and found books they wouldn't let us read in school that I discovered you could be insane and happy and have a good life without being like everybody else.

Stupid is never that entertaining. You can be stupid and sexy, stupid and funny but he's just plain stupid. That is not remarkable, that's what I mean.

I would never want to live anywhere but Baltimore. You can look far and wide, but you'll never discover a stranger city with such extreme style. It's as if every eccentric in the South decided to move north, ran out of gas in Baltimore, and decided to stay.

If I could pick my own death, it would be on a roller coaster that jumps the tracks and careens into a packed crowd at a cotton candy stand at a state fair.

And I seek people who break rules with happiness - and not bringing pain to themselves.

If you purposefully look to shock people, it isn't funny. That's what 50 million dollar Hollywood comedies do; try to be shocking and dirty. They aren't really. It isn't enough to shock. It's easy to shock. Real surprise is what I'm after. Those early movies, we had drugs, which you weren't supposed to show. You weren't supposed to shoot up. We would make fun of hippies. I think that we were punk before there was punk.

I have to talk about my movies. I have to give interviews to promote what I'm doing. But no one really knows my personal life. And if you don't have a personal life I feel bad for you.

I keep very close in touch with the fans - to see what they like. I'm very in touch with my audience; I get older and they get younger, which I think is the ultimate compliment. I think hitchhiking brought a few of them out! Even though all young people have never hitchhiked, all people my age did at one point in their life, they just don't do it now.

I've signed peoples' parole cards at book signings and it's very touching.

Why is Mommy crying?" the young boy asks his dad, all sugared up and bewildered with concern. "Because you're an asshole," barks back the father with exasperated logic.

Pride myself on the fact that my work has no socially redeeming value.

In Hollywood, the real stars are all in animation. Alvin and the Chipmunks don't throw star fits, don't demand custom-designed Winnebagos, and are a breeze at costume fittings. Cruella DeVille, Gorgo, Rainbow Brite, Gus-Gus, Uncle Scrooge, and the Care Bears are all superstars and they don't have drug problems, marital difficulties, or paternity suits to blacken their images. They don't age, balk at promoting, or sass highly paid directors. Plus, you can market them to death and they never feel exploited. I'd like to do a big-budget snuff film starring every last one of them.

Terrible things always seemed to happen to hitchhikers in movies - including my own. It has always been glamorous and dangerous and scary and sexy.

I always give books. And I always ask for books. I think you should reward people sexually for getting you books. Don't send a thank-you note, repay them with sexual activity. If the book is rare or by your favorite author or one you didn't know about, reward them with the most perverted sex act you can think of. Otherwise, you can just make out.

And yep, here's yet one more heterosexual man who loves his wife. I'm telling you, it's a trend! Women I know who are always complaining they can never meet a good straight man - maybe you're living in the wrong part of the country. Maybe you need to hitchhike. Route 70 West could be the path to a great marriage. Go ahead, stick out your thumb for romance.

I don't mind exercise but it's a private activity. Joggers should run in a wheel - like hamsters - because I don't want to look at them. And I really hate people who go on an airplane in jogging outfits. That's a major offense today, even bigger than Spandex bicycle pants. You see eighty-year-old women coming on the plane in jogging outfits for comfort. Well my comfort - my mental comfort - is completely ruined when I see them coming. You're on an airplane, not in your bedroom, so please! And I really hate walkathons: blocking traffic, people patting themselves on the back. The whole attitude offends me. They have this smug look on their faces as they hold you up in traffic so that they can give two cents to some charity.

I think the best article was the article about radical feminists being against transgender women. I found that the most fascinating article and I absolutely loved it. I love battles within the gay community or feminist community. I love radical theorists.

Technique is nothing more than failed style.

How could you think of such awful things? liberal critics always ask. How else could I possibly amuse myself? I always wonder.

Oh my God!" I hear him yell to just about everybody. "Did you see that?! That was John Waters. I'm almost certain he has shit his pants!!" I hear grown men laugh in constipated smugness and digestive superiority.

I'd rather have a daughter in a whorehouse than a son in the police force,' Esther used to rage to anyone who would listen.

It delights me to find something that kids are doing that surprises me that seems new. That's the best feeling you can have.

Fantasies are like extra cash. They need to be banked for later use.

And finally, count your blessings. You got through college. You didn't commit suicide, O.D., or have a nervous breakdown, and let's remember the ones who did. It's time to get busy. It's your turn to cause trouble.

[W]hat I like best is staying home and reading. Being rich is not about how many homes you own. It's the freedom to pick up any book you want without looking at the price and wondering whether you can afford it.

Nora Ephron's great line that overtipping only costs a few dollars more.

But my abortion politics are simple. If you can't love your child, don't have it, because it will grow up and kill me.

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.

The "Texas Chainsaw Massacre" hitchhiker really made people never want to hitchhike again - the hitcher, the show. Hitchhiking is always vaguely sexual.

John!?" I ask in shock. This woman recognizes me? It can't be! "How do you know my name?" I wonder out loud. Suddenly she looks nervous. "Well ... you don't recognize me?" I stare at her quizzically and she smiles sweetly and then says the one word that explains it all. "Eggs!" she cries in the most identifiable voice in the world. "EDITH!?" I scream so loud, she jumps. "Yes, honey, it's me ... ," she shyly admits. "You're alive!?

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

To me, racist jokes are not funny. I am politically correct, in a weird way. I like to push the boundaries that are politically correct.

I thank God I was raised Catholic, so sex will always be dirty.

True success is figuring out your life and career so you never have to be around jerks.

I love radical theorists. But at the same time, I don't agree with them a lot, but I love their theories. I love how they intellectualize rage, and this inner battle that such a tiny percent of people really care about. I find that the most interesting.

The first real thing was Divine as Jackie Kennedy [in Eat Your Makeup]. His mother found the bloody Jackie Kennedy outfit in the boot of his car and said, 'What is this?" and Divine said, "I am Jackie Kennedy!" His mother just changed the subject; she didn't know what to say.

I have no interest in cars. I have a plain, used Buick. I could run over 10 people, and you wouldn't be able to describe my car.

We need to make books cool again. If you go home with somebody and they don't have books, don't fuck them.

I loved Cookie [Mueller]. She was a much better writer than actress. She shouldn't have stuck with me in the beginning; she should have immediately become a writer. She would have had more of a chance.

I'm alive, I think, and so many of my friends are not. I may be nuts to be doing this, but I'm kind of proud of myself. I am having an adventure. I like my life. Even if I have to stand here for the rest of it.

I can't tell the difference between the best and the worst 'cause I realize not everybody wants to have sex in the middle of a demolition derby race in the car.

Maybe I'll just write books. I'd like to make another movie, but I don't want to go back and [do] what they want you to do, to make it for a million dollars. I did that. I don't need a lot, but I need what I used to get, and they don't give you that anymore.

You have to remember that it is impossible to commit a crime while reading a book.

There was a cultural war going on, the '60s was going on. All the film critics were square.

Collect books, even if you don't plan on reading them right away. Nothing is more important than an unread library.

Contemporary art hates you.

I understand why people want to look up their friends - usually they want to see what people they've wanted to have sex with look like.

Sometimes I wish I was a woman, just so I could have an abortion.

When I started making movies about weird people, I knew they were weird, I was infected with irony, and I wanted New York to notice.

I'm an old person because I still buy DVDs. I have every one of my albums and 45s - I even have a couple of 33s and I do have a turntable. But I must admit, I don't listen to vinyl today. But I listen to all types of music.

I think the extremes are something that's really interesting to see coalesce in movies.

All ideology can be embraced if the leader dresses well.

I never thought I'd be 52 years old. I don't think that anybody at 16 thinks like that.

I always want to see films that are startling and amazing. Not just shocking. Shocking is easy to do. But startling in the way that makes you change how you think about things. Those are the movies I like the best.

I went to the Vatican once - it was a bad idea. I went into the bookshop and I bought hideous, pious postcards and then I asked for a receipt, and the nun said, "We don't give receipts at the Vatican." Which threw me into a rage of like, "I guess not, so you can take this money and funnel it into anti-homosexual groups!" People had to drag me out of there. It's not good for me to go into the Vatican.

I want to be harder to reach, not easier.

Life is a rotten lottery.

The way I photograph ... in many ways it's directed by chance and all my mistakes, which are often the best stuff. I found that no matter if it's the same tape, the same TV, and the same camera, I can never duplicate an image ... your arm jiggles, there's just too much chance. And I never put it on pause, or use any of that fancy equipment.

So to make movies, if you're first goal is to make money, well you can! Make a tent-pole movie that China wants. But that's not the kind of thing that's really going to get your remembered. You're not going to change anything with that. You might become rich from it!

I go to colleges all the time in America, and everyone's gay, and I think how can this be? And it's only in rich schools. In poor schools, nobody's gay.

I'm rich! I don't mean money-wise. I mean that I have figured out how to never be around assholes at any time in my personal and professional life. That's rich.

A lot of kids are moving to Baltimore, because we have a great music scene and we've got edge. Come on down, we've got scary edge. But great edge - it's still a city you can be a bohemian in.

I could never kill myself. I approve of suicide if you have horrible health. Otherwise it's the ultimate hissy fit.

Keep up with what's causing chaos in your own field.

I sneak a look over and consider a blow job, but even I know giving head in the middle of a demolition derby is risky,

The only insult I've ever received in my adult life was when someone asked me, "Do you have a hobby?" A HOBBY?! DO I LOOK LIKE A FUCKING DABBLER?!

I keep on having ideas and developments. Some happen and some don't, but I still always have a way of telling a story.

My idea of rich is that you can buy every book you ever want without looking at the price and you're never around assholes. That's the two things to really fight for in life.

I like the word 'underground' ... 'independent' carries a stigma of whininess. 'Underground' means a good time.