John Waters Quotes

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.

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.

Don’t sleep with people who don’t read.

My idea of an interesting person is someone who is quite proud of their seemingly abnormal life and turns their disadvantage into a career.

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

You should never read just for "enjoyment." Read to make yourself smarter! Less judgmental. More apt to understand your friends' insane behavior, or better yet, your own. Pick "hard books." Ones you have to concentrate on while reading. And for god's sake, don't let me ever hear you say, "I can't read fiction. I only have time for the truth." Fiction is the truth, fool! Ever hear of "literature"? That means fiction, too, stupid.

[My catholic education] sticked with me. It caused the rage I had to make 'Pink Flamingos.'

Without obsession, life is nothing.

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

So many great people are dead, and so many assholes I know are still alive. Karma's bullshit. I wish it was true, but it ain't.

I like rap music. But bragging about being rich to poor people is really offensive. I want to hear a rap song about buying a Cy Twombly painting or dating a museum curator. I want to hear about that kind of rich.

"Family" this and "family" that. If I had a family I'd be furious that moral busybodies are taking the perfectly good word family and using it as a code for censorship the same way "states' rights" was used to disguise racism in the mid-sixties.

Being rich is not about how much money you have or how many homes you own; it's the freedom to buy any book you want without looking at the price and wondering if you can afford it.

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.

Do we secretly idolize our imagined opposites, yearning to become the role models for others we know we could never be for ourselves?

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

I like hard movies; I like ones that are basically the opposite of a date movie.

I don't know how I made those movies. I went out every single night, I smoked pot every single day. I drank. We did everything, but I never became a drug addict or an alcoholic. Other friends are dead, many of them. So many people in this retrospective...in Female Trouble, almost everyone is dead.

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

To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about. If someone vomits while watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation. But one must remember that there is such a thing as good bad taste and bad bad taste.

The Easter Bunny is a major reason for heroin addiction in America.

People vomitied at my movies; not because of the movie but because they were drunk. I took credit anyway.

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

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

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

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.

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

I'm always amazed at friends who say they try to read at night in bed but always end up falling asleep. I have the opposite problem. If a book is good I can't go to sleep, and stay up way past my bedtime, hooked on the writing. Is anything better than waking up after a late-night read and diving right back into the plot before you even get out of bed to brush your teeth?

Hitchhiking, intrinsically, is sexual and dangerous. At the same time I never really felt scared. I was scared that nobody would pick me up and that I'd be waiting by the side of the road for a week.

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.

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

I've had a pretty amazing life, a good life, and God knows I'm thankful, but I do believe that after 30, stop whining! Everybody's dealt a hand, and it's not fair what you get. But you've got to deal with it.

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.

To understand bad taste one must have very good taste.

If you can make someone laugh who's dead set against you, that's the first step to winning them over to your side.

Even illegal weapons have lost their panache. Zip guns and shanks were at least homemade. Where is the craft in a grade-schooler firing a magnum? What is the world coming to? It's not even bad to be a communist anymore!

I'm here today because of LSD. LSD gave me the confidence to be who I am today. Completely.

What happened is that in the middle of my life I went away and in my own sense of hubris, pride, cynicism, thought, I am an autonomous being in the world, I can control things, I am God.' But my experiment at being God failed! And they do have a great saying in AA: 'Get down off the cross, we need the wood!' And the important thing is to realise you are not the centre of the universe, you are not God.

Wouldn't you rather your kid be a drug dealer than a drug addict?

I respect everything I make fun of.

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 built a career on negative reviews. I didn't get a good review ever until Fran Lebowitz gave me a good review in Interview. That was the first good review I got in 10 years.

You have to think of a new way to completely surprise people who think they're hip. I always said you could make an NC-17 movie with no sex and no violence. Now I don't know what that could possibly be, but if you could think it up, you'd have a hit.

And my little sister Chrissy, for teaching me that life is nothing if you're not obsessed.

Stop blaming your parents. If you're really angry at 60 years old, you're an idiot! You've got to work some of it out.

Life is a rotten lottery.

I always wanted to be a juvenile delinquent but my parents wouldn't let me.

My films can be considered political action against the tyranny of good taste.

I don't trust anyone that hasn't been to jail at least once in their life.