John Waters Quotations

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

Always be prepared if someone asks you what you want for Christmas. Give brand names, the store that sells the merchandise, and, if possible, exact model numbers so they can't go wrong. Be the type who's impossible to buy for, so they have to get what you want.

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.

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

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

Isn't that the most perverse thing you've ever heard?

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.

Making out with Divine, that's beyond the bravery of coming out. He was hassled about being gay. You couldn't come out. It was illegal. But he had a sense of humor about the glamour he was caught in. He's a great sport, and a great star.

Had partition not occurred, or had it proved less controversial and problematic, there would be no sense of discomfort now about remembering the beginnings of independent Ireland.

He's also someone who men and women are instantly fond of , ... He's the cutest, funniest boy that you would meet in real life. He can certainly act but he's a real person, someone that every time you know you're going to have fun when you go out with him.

Jeff is an outstanding teacher and coach. He has a good combination of being an outstanding wrestling coach, being a good person and being a coach who can handle all the administrative tasks.

I wish something on T.V. would trouble me. Then maybe I would watch it.

We have to make money or they're never going to give it to us. Christine understands that. Let's be realistic here. We don't have a grant anymore. We have a budget. And she really wants and believes and thinks of a way for these weirdo movies to make money.

To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about

The thing I wanted to do was show that it's about the people that come in this building every day.

Now it's on Court TV in America, so that's taken the challenge out of it,

People don't understand how this water went, and people don't understand this bridge.

Clint is a man of high integrity, and I know he wants to continue coaching basketball. Hopefully he'll get to fulfill that wish.

Georgia is doing a great job of opening up its economy and its government and its future to integrating with Europe and more intense democratic standards. We want to see Armenia tied as closely as it can be to Georgia for purposes of trade, for purposes of transport, and others.

The ultimate irony is that I'm becoming part of the establishment,

I totally neutered it for Wal-Mart and Blockbuster, I made a baby version of my film,

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

I think that in America there is a new movement of underground movies that wants to kick the ass of independent films that they think whine too much.

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

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.

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 never had any desire to get a tattoo. If I was ever going to get one, I would get a plain anchor with a rope around it, the most unimaginative possible tattoo, like Popeye had.

Without obsession, life is nothing.

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.

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.

Once I had a shrink who said, "Your parents are the fuel you run on," because I was raised in the tyranny of good taste. If my parents hadn't taught me all that, I couldn't have made fun of it. So I thank them, and they were loving. It takes a long time to realize that they made me feel safe when I lived a life which was very not safe.

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

I always say you need something weird on your face and some good shoes and nobody looks in the middle.

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.

At the premiere of Hairspray on Broadway, Harvey Fierstein's mom said to my mom, "Didn't we raise great sons?" and my mother just started sobbing, because I'm sure they'd both been through other nights when people didn't say that.

Contemporary art hates you.

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?

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

There is still such a thing as subversive. Subversive makes hip people nervous. It's something new that scares you in a good way. I mean, subversive to me is a compliment. Subversive is something that influences people to do something against society that they haven't thought of before.

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.

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

If you want to be an artist, go to every art gallery, if you want to be in movies, see movies! You have to participate in whichever world you're trying to enter! You have to know what's going on. You can be the best artist in the world but if you don't know one thing about which gallery to go to, you're never going to get it shown in the right place. Learn a little bit about the business of whichever art you're trying to get into. Without it, you will be lost.

Watching a movie should be like hunting. Out of context, every image of the cinema is yours for a split second. Take them before they bury it.

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.

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

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!

Some call me director, producer, filmmaker. I prefer to call myself pube-king.

To me, beauty is looks you can never forget. A face should jolt, not soothe.

No comedy should be longer than 90 minutes. There's no such thing as a good long joke.

Fame is protection if you go to a scary place. Fame is fun. A lot of people don't say anything and you don't know they know who you are.

I'm perpetual tourist, and that's the best way to travel. Nobody gets used to you, you make new friends without having to hear anyone's everyday problems, and you jet back still feeling like a know-it-all.

Everyone's sex life is funny except your own. Every person's is, and yours never is. The lengths people go to — and the extremes and the conditions and the mental exercises and guilt and shame and happiness that everybody goes through — and what they'll do for sex is never-ending and mind-boggling and very interesting to me. And I don't think a lot of times people choose any of it.

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

I was always flattered, but I just want my movies to make money. I want to be commercial. I'm never the person who says, "I don't care if people don't see my movies." I always want people to see my movies.

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

I came from a generation where women were almost deified, and like Groucho Marx's line, "I wouldn't want to be a member of a club that would have me as a member", I thought, "I wouldn't want to sleep with a woman who would sleep with me!" It took me a long time to work my way through that.

Censorship has been my best press agent my whole life.

I mean, what is prison, really, except a good bar without the liquor?

I've signed dicks, asses, parole cards, a colostomy bag while it was still pumping. A couple of years ago, I signed a bloody Tampax. That's one you don't forget. I'm not asking for someone to top that!

Wealth is walking into any bookshop and buying any book you want without looking at the price tag.

I never rewatch the great films of my favorite directors because I'm afraid they won't hold up.

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.

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!"

I hate it when people say, I'm an artist. I think, well, I'll be the judge of that. And I don't think artist is a job description. It's a critique, a favorable critique, that someone else might apply to your work. I guess in the art world I'm not exactly a photographer, but I do use photography.

Ever feel like killing somebody just to see if you could get away with it? Sure, you have. Everybody has little things that get on their nerves.

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

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

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.

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

Yeah, I know I should be fighting for gay rights, but who wants to join the army or get married anyway?

I'll have pot in my home for guests - I'm polite! - but I don't sit around and smoke by myself, ever. Not like I did when I was young.

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

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

My photographs are not really about photography. They are about editing. I use photography but they are all taken from the TV screen. Anybody can do that, but it's the order I put the pictures in to try to create a new kind of movie, something that you can put on your wall.

If you think someone's trying too hard, that's the worst thing they can do. To me, it's just desperate, never funny and never witty. It's kind of really old hat because just being shocking isn't enough. It has to change how you think about something. It has to startle you. It has to make you look at something and reconsider whether you're right. That's the whole point.

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 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.

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

I can't complain about anything. It's like saying, "I don't like talkies." Time marches on and I don't care how people watch my movies as long as they see them. I don't care if they're on their phone. Believe me, if you ever want to watch my early films they would look a lot better on your phone than they would on a movie screen. The smaller the better.

...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.

I respect everything I make fun of.

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

Aren't maids the ultimate art critics?

It's time now to rent a car, roll down the windows and prepare for your first big thrill: the freeways. They're so much fun they should charge admission. Never fret about zigzagging back and forth through six lanes of traffic at high speeds; it erases jet lag in a split second. You're now heading toward Hollywood, like any normal tourist. Breathe in that smog and feel lucky that only in L.A. will you glimpse a green sun or a brown moon. Forget the propaganda you've heard about clean air; demand oxygen you can see in all its glorious discoloration.

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.

I'm for gay marriage. I don't want to do it, but I certainly think people should be allowed to, and I wouldn't vote for anybody that would be against it. But at the same time, why do we have to be good now? Why can't we be villains in movies?

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.

There are little things that get on my nerves, like people who have reading material in their powder room. When you go in someone’s house, and next to the toilet they have a huge basket of magazines, I find that repellent. I recommend against straining while reading.