John Waters Quotes

I like film books at the bottom of the barrel and art books at the top. 'The Ghastly One,' by Jimmy McDonough, is a hilarious biography of one of the most hideous directors who ever picked up a movie camera - Andy Milligan.

- John Waters

The nightlife in Baltimore is very mixed. Any gay people I know go to the hipster bars; they don't go to the gay bars. Start your night at the Club Charles, and then you can meet people to go other places. The Charles has been Baltimore's favourite cool hipster bar forever.

- John Waters

When I was young, there were bars called the 'Hungry Hole,' and in those same neighbourhoods are now gay people pushing baby carriages.

- John Waters

I've been arrested several times. I've been known to dress in ludicrous fashions. I've also built a career out of negative reviews.

- John Waters

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

- John Waters

I'd be arrested if I still smoked because I'm the one who would be changing the battery in the airplane in the lavatory to take out the smoke detector. I would've been those people they warn you against.

- John Waters

I like art. It's another way to rebel.

- John Waters

I've been an art collector since the Sixties, and I kept it very separate from my showbusiness career. I've had art shows since the early Nineties, a museum show that travelled to four countries. I've had three or four art books; it's just another way I have to tell stories.

- John Waters

My mother's brother became the undersecretary of the interior for Nixon, which did cause a little drama in my family because I was going to riots and everything, but he turned out great and gave us a nice cheque for an AIDS benefit we had for the 'Serial Mom' premiere.

- John Waters

A hair-hopper is someone who pretends they're rich, who really wasn't brought up very wealthy but now tries to brag that they're rich, and they spend too much time on their hair.

- John Waters

I went through different looks. At one period, I was preppy because that's how I grew up. But then I had bleached hair in the front. And I used to wear - then I wanted to be a beatnik. It was hard to be a beatnik in suburban Baltimore. But I wanted to be one.

- John Waters

One Christmas, Dennis Dermody, the movie critic of 'Paper,' gave me 'Rock Hudson: A Gathering of Friends,' the master invitation list from Rock Hudson's memorial service. It's so great. Everyone's in it, with personal addresses all bound into a book. Someone else once gave me Ike Turner's will. I get great stuff.

- John Waters

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 always say to Johnny Knoxville, 'How do you do it? You sort of do the same thing we did, except you made millions, and I made hundreds.'

- John Waters

Fellini was a little lofty for a teenage boy, but certainly he was a huge influence.

- John Waters

New York was scarier than Baltimore ever was. It was terrible in the '70s. I'm glad they cleaned it up. I got mugged; I had to go to the hospital. Every time you went out, you got robbed. It was horrible. You can't imagine.

- John Waters

I used to run away to New York from Baltimore all the time. I would get on the Greyhound bus and tell my parents I was going to some sorority weekend... I'd even make up fake permission slips, come to New York, and just ask people on the street if I could stay with them and go see midnight movies.

- John Waters

Life is a rotten lottery. 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.

- John Waters

When I first saw 'House on Haunted Hill' as a kid in Baltimore, and the skeleton went out on the wire, and the thousand kids in the audience went crazy... My whole life, I've tried to at least equal that cinema anarchy. I came close with the end of 'Pink Flamingos,' but I didn't tie with it.

- John Waters

Bergman movies were the most influential. They used to show at Goucher University, which was where my parents used to live. 'Brink of Life' was the first one I ever saw. Three pregnant women in a maternity ward and their misery - I love that. That is what I want to show at my funeral.

- John Waters

'Blood Feast' is my favorite of Lewis' films. When we shot 'Serial Mom,' and I showed them the infamous tongue scene, one of the female crew members said, 'I hate when a guy does that.'

- John Waters

Grade school ruined reading for me by demanding book reports for such snore-a-thons as Benjamin Franklin's biography written for children.

- John Waters

I do take a one-week vacation every year, and I go to London in the fall.

- John Waters

I've always been close to my family. I've got a lot of nieces and nephews, but I'm a good uncle.

- John Waters

I think I'm probably the only person that, when the parents lent me money to make the movie, they wished I had not paid them back. They could have said 'No,' and it would have ended, and I would have gotten a real job.

- John Waters

My father was horrified by my movies, yet he lent me the money to make the early ones. And I paid him back with interest.

- John Waters

What fashion has started from hackers? They have bad posture, and they don't go out. I wish I had a hacker boyfriend - they stay at home up in the bedroom.

- John Waters

Underground, raw movies that come out of nowhere and change everything - they aren't slick-looking. But I have nothing against slick-looking as long as the scripts are funny.

- John Waters

Who have I been starstruck by in real life? One of the weirdest ones was, when we were making 'Cry-Baby,' David Nelson from 'The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet.' I couldn't believe he was sitting in my living room. Certainly Patricia Hearst. Tab Hunter. A lot of the stars I've worked with, when I first got them.

- John Waters

They all want you to make a movie for under a million dollars, which I don't want to. I don't want to be a faux radical film-maker at 70. I did that. I don't need to do it again.

- John Waters

My 40th birthday I held in an old-age home. My 50th I had at Pravda before it opened in New York. My 60th I had at Pastis. For my 70th, I thought, 'I don't need to have a celebrity party this year. I'm going to go take my oldest, closest friends to Paris.'

- John Waters

I had a stage when I was 12 years old. I had a puppet show career. I wrote horror stories in camp, and all the parents called and complained.

- John Waters

Science fiction is something I never understood.

- John Waters

Marriage equality is a hustler's feeding frenzy of gold-diggers. I campaigned for marriage equality in Maryland because I believe we should have the right to it, but I personally don't want to get married. I don't want to imitate the traditions of heterosexual people. I hate weddings: they make me uneasy.

- John Waters

It's still possible to make movies. Not so much on YouTube. On YouTube, you wind up with an advertising career. What movie became infamous and a hit because of YouTube? Maybe there is one. I don't know.

- John Waters

I believe if you come out of a movie and the first thing you say is, 'The cinematography was beautiful,' it's a bad movie.

- John Waters

For a meal out, my number one restaurant is Peter's Inn. I first went there when it was an old biker bar. Believe me, when it was Motorcycle Pete's, that was fun. I had my 30th birthday there.

- John Waters

By wrecking something, it's always reinventing. All modern movements in art and music wrecked what came before, in a way - and surprised the cooler generation that was one step ahead. That's how you get ahead.

- John Waters

Putting out compilation records, buying the right to music is incredibly complicated. You have to find the writer of the song and the publisher of the song - not the singer - and make two separate deals.

- John Waters

I have so many other things going on that if 'A Dirty Shame' is my last movie, that's OK.

- John Waters

'Serial Mom' tested really well when we finally got with the right audience. But they would go to some shopping mall in a deep, deep suburban L.A. neighborhood where they knew people would hate, and they just wanted to spend money to prove that people wouldn't like it. The movie was not a success when it came out.

- John Waters

I don't mind snobs, if they have a reason to be a snob.

- John Waters

The first record I got, I think I stole. I was with my mother; she turned her back, and I slipped it in my coat. And I think it was 'Cry Baby' by The Bonnie Sisters. That or 'Lucille' by Little Richard.

- John Waters

The rudest possible gift is a gift card. It means you think the person is stupid and has no interests. The only good gift card is Bitcoin. You practically have to be a hacker to know about it.

- John Waters

If you're a juvenile delinquent today, you're a hacker. You live in your parent's house; they haven't seen you for two months. They put food outside your door, and you're shutting down a government of a foreign country from your computer.

- John Waters

I wanted to own a junk yard as a child, you know. I used to smash cars and think, 'Oh, my God, there's been an accident.' My mother would take me to junk yards, and I look back on that and I think, 'Wow, that was really loving.'

- John Waters

I used to hitchhike a lot. I'd come home on the train from New York, and there'd be no cabs, but people would pick me right up and take me to my door because they recognised me. It was like a car service. I never really had a bad experience hitchhiking.

- John Waters

I was creating characters early. People didn't beat me up. I scared them. I hated authority. I could also get people to do things; I was quite the early director. I could make people laugh enough to get their defences down - and then brainwash them.

- John Waters

People looked at my early pictures and called them the most disgusting things ever, and now 'Hairspray' is being done at every school in Britain and America.

- John Waters

'Hairspray' maybe did change people's minds, and that's how you get your political enemies to change their minds - by making them laugh and making them look at something in a way they haven't seen it. Not by preaching and cutting them off and being a separatist.

- John Waters

Liberal censors are the worst. I don't remember any trouble with 'Serial Mom' or 'Cecil B. Demented' or any of them. Except 'Cry Baby.'

- John Waters

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.

- John Waters

I don't believe that we should never not talk to people we don't agree with politically. If you can make that person laugh, it's the first step to getting him to listen to change their mind.

- John Waters

You have to think of a new way to make something new. And the biggest sin - you can never try too hard. You can never look like you're just trying to shock people, 'cause that's simple. But making people laugh is the hard part.

- John Waters

In sixth grade, I went to a very good private school, and I did learn there. I learned how to read and write. If I had quit school in sixth grade, I would know as much as I know today and would have made one more movie. By the time I got to college, I was so bored and angry.

- John Waters

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.

- John Waters

Everyone's sex life is funny except your own. Every person's is, and yours never is.

- John Waters

Everybody think they're an outsider - that word's over! When I was young, being an outsider, I thought it was a bad thing you didn't want to be.

- John Waters

Around '62 in Baltimore, all the girls had those big hairdos. And then suddenly, a few of the really hip ones started doing their hair straight. And people panicked. And it was called going 'Joe,' meaning Joe College. And people would say, 'I don't know. Should I be 'Joe'? I can't decide.'

- John Waters

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

- John Waters

My mother was Catholic, my father not. I went to Catholic high school. Every form of education failed me. I was trouble.

- John Waters

I like to cook for myself or others, so I cook. I always read at night. Sometimes I go to the movies. I don't go out wildly during the week.

- John Waters

I like the elitism of the art world. I think art for the people is a terrible idea.

- John Waters

My early films look terrible! I didn't know what I was doing. I learned when I was doing it. I never went to film school.

- John Waters

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.

- John Waters

On airplanes, strangers confide in me the most deepest, darkest secrets. And I think they think I'll understand. And I generally do understand.

- John Waters

My biggest fear in life is living Nativity scenes. I hide in cars and drive around looking at them. Something about it is really scary to me. What parent would put their child in there with mules and camels and straw?

- John Waters

I always was a weird child. My mother told me the story that, in kindergarten, I would come home and tell her about this weird kid in my class who drew only with black crayons and didn't speak to other kids. I talked about it so much that my mother brought it up with the teacher, who said, 'What? That's your son.'

- John Waters

I always had a work ethic. And I think I very much got that from my father and my mother.

- John Waters

The few movies I can even think of that I watch over and over would be the Elizabeth Taylor/Richard Burton movie 'Boom!', 'Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!', and 'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.' I wouldn't call any of them mainstream.

- John Waters

I'm sick of '60s nostalgia. I've been to clubs in New York where it's just like the Fillmore East. And I thought I hated that then.

- John Waters

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.

- John Waters

Good actors, actually, in real life, are shy and very quiet people a lot of the time.

- John Waters

I believe that both Obama and Trump would describe themselves as outsiders.

- John Waters

My perfect day in Baltimore begins with getting my five newspapers. Then I would write.

- John Waters

Always, European art cinema has been the most threatening and the grimmest and the most transgressive, I think.

- John Waters

I remember when I first went to the Baltimore Museum of Art and I bought this little Moreau print in the gift shop. I took it home, and I was, like, 12 years old or something.

- John Waters

I wrote about Herschell in my book 'Shock Value,' for which I interviewed him. We became friends; I had dinner with Herschell the last year before he died. He was elderly, but his mind was perfectly intact.

- John Waters

In the beginning, my equipment, I would rent them from teamster-types, really. I don't know where they got the cameras - I think from the TV stations. But I don't know if they asked the TV stations.

- John Waters

My main residence is Baltimore. I have an apartment in New York, one in San Francisco, and I live in a rental in Provincetown in the summer.

- John Waters

I read, every day, the 'Wall Street Journal''s editorials because I like to think how my smart enemy thinks.

- John Waters

I was in the 'Alvin and the Chipmunk' movie, which was a real bucket list item.

- John Waters

I never got along in school, really - I already knew what I wanted to do. I have never in my life got a paycheck from anywhere in the world that asked if I went to school.

- John Waters

My dreams have come true. I mean, everything I wanted to happen as a kid has already happened.

- John Waters

To me, the most important thing is the script. I would never make a movie that I didn't write. I wouldn't know how to.

- John Waters

I've taught in prison; I've counseled people... I've been arrested; I've been to the psychiatrist.

- John Waters

I grew up in Baltimore, which is, you know, a city of extremes certainly, but my parents were very conservative. But they made me feel safe, and even though they were mortified at what I was doing, they encouraged it. I think because they thought, what else could I do?

- John Waters

If I'm seeing a three-hour foreign film, I don't want to watch it in a bed.

- John Waters

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

- John Waters

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

- John Waters

There are schools for weird children now. There wasn't when I was young.

- John Waters

I don't trust anyone that hasn't been to jail at least once in their life. You should have been, or something's the matter with you.

- John Waters

At my age, you can go either fat or gaunt. I've gone gaunt.

- John Waters

I think it would be fun to die onstage! Just drop dead in the middle of my show? That wouldn't be so bad.

- John Waters

In the 1960s, if you could save $500, you had enough to move to another city and start a new life.

- John Waters

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

- John Waters

Do I like how digital films look? Sometimes, but sometimes it looks flat, and ugly.

- John Waters

My dad saw 'A Dirty Shame.' I felt bad about my father knowing what 'felching' was.

- John Waters

I don't like rules of any kind. And I seek people who break rules with happiness - and not bringing pain to themselves.

- John Waters

I want to be in a 'Final Destination' movie.

- John Waters

Without obsession, life is nothing.

- John Waters

I don't like reality TV. I don't want to look down on people.

- John Waters

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.

- John Waters

If I made a film today, it would certainly be on digital.

- John Waters

I always wanted them to look like Hollywood movies; I just didn't know how to do it.

- John Waters

I didn't follow anybody's advice, really.

- John Waters

I can make a movie for $5M, which used to be a routinely low, independent movie, but there's no such thing as that any more.

- John Waters

I'd be a bad father. I'm too self-involved.

- John Waters