John Waters Quotes

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

I get dumber as the day goes along. Every second of the day that goes along, I get stupider.

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.

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.

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.

The only time I had a normal boyfriend was during the time of AIDS, so maybe that saved me. It's certainly not karma.

Censorship has been my best press agent my whole life.

If you ever go home with somebody and they don't have books in their house, don't sleep with them. I think that's very important.

How come there's no terrorism with humor, which is a great way to humiliate your enemy? It's a great time for that.

Just make sure your children hate authority and they'll do fine.

I haven't changed - the public has. I'm an insider now, which is hilarious.

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

I don't believe in depression. There's no such thing. It's an invention. It's bullshit, it's a cop out.

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

I think I technically learned some things, hopefully. But I go to the movies for characters and story and a berserk vision.

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

William Castle and Alfred Hitchcock were the first director-personalities. Before then, nobody in America knew what a director was.

The anger I have about high school - which I do have because they discouraged every interest I ever had; actually I call it anti-education - that anger led to my career.

I live in San Francisco, I live in Provincetown. They're all the same, apart from Baltimore. Baltimore's the only cheap place left.

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

Nothing is more impotent than an unread library.

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

People that pick up hitchhikers I believe are basically good people that believe in other people and understand problems and don't judge people. That's always the kind of person I'm looking for.

People still come to Baltimore and say, "I didn't realize you made documentaries."

I'm not a separatist, I'm friends with some people who voted for Trump, not many. Nobody has the nerve to tell me, but a few have.

I would describe myself as a writer that hopes to take you into my world and help you feel a little safer.

I probably would have made [films] anywhere. Every city has something they're ashamed of. I would have made films about it and turned it into something positive.

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

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.

People who want to act rich when they're upper-middle class. They try too hard.

The further away I am from water, the less well I do!

Anyone from my past I'm interested in, I've already stalked their homes. I like to go outside.

Everybody should wish they had home movies of themselves, acting out their lunacy on LSD.

Coke didn't last long enough; it gave me a hangover for two weeks for being high for ten minutes.

Valentine's Day is my mother's birthday. If I'm wildly in love, I've sent people chicken hearts, which seems to appeal to the kind of person that I've been in love with.

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.

Things are going great in every part of my life except movies. That's okay. I've got a lot of other parts of my life. I've made 15 movies. You can see any one of my movies and it says the same thing.

If I died tomorrow I've accomplished what I set out to do in my life. I enjoy making my movies, I enjoy doing what I do. I have a nice life.

If your kid comes out of the bedroom and says he just shut down the government, it seems to me he should at least have an outfit for that.

I care about the presidential elections. I always vote. Sometimes I've voted more than once, illegally. But you can't anymore. The picture ID has ruined everything.

An underground hit didn't make any money and it cost a dollar to get in.

It reinforced everything that I believe. I am an optimist. I believe in the goodness of people.

I was as equally influenced by Bergman as I was [low-budget sexploitation filmmaker].

I think that young people understand me perfectly. I think that's the luckiest thing about my career, that I get older and they get younger, and it didn't stop with my generation.

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.

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 never thought I had more fun when I was young than kids are having today. I think they have just as much fun. It's a different way to have fun.

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.

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 think that nobody gets mad at me anymore, no matter what I say, because I don't think I'm mean. I am interested in what's next.