Top 349 Quotes & Sayings by John Waters
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American director John Waters.
Last updated on November 21, 2024.
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.
I like the elitism of the art world. I think art for the people is a terrible idea.
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.
I wish something on T.V. would trouble me. Then maybe I would watch it.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
My perfect day in Baltimore begins with getting my five newspapers. Then I would write.
I have so many other things going on that if 'A Dirty Shame' is my last movie, that's OK.
Being a traditionalist, I'm a rabid sucker for Christmas. In July, I'm already worried that there are only 146 shopping days left.
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.
Science fiction is something I never understood.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.'
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.
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.
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.
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.
At my age, you can go either fat or gaunt. I've gone gaunt.
Without obsession, life is nothing.
I believe that both Obama and Trump would describe themselves as outsiders.
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.
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.
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.
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?
I'd love to sell out completely. It's just that nobody has been willing to buy.
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.
Isn't that the most perverse thing you've ever heard?
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.
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 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.
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.
Fellini was a little lofty for a teenage boy, but certainly he was a huge influence.
I don't mind snobs, if they have a reason to be a snob.
Grade school ruined reading for me by demanding book reports for such snore-a-thons as Benjamin Franklin's biography written for children.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.'
I like art. It's another way to rebel.
I've always been close to my family. I've got a lot of nieces and nephews, but I'm a good uncle.
If I made a film today, it would certainly be on digital.
When I was young, there were bars called the 'Hungry Hole,' and in those same neighbourhoods are now gay people pushing baby carriages.
Do I like how digital films look? Sometimes, but sometimes it looks flat, and ugly.
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.
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.
Everyone's sex life is funny except your own. Every person's is, and yours never is.
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.
I thank God I was raised Catholic, so sex will always be dirty.
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.
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.
My dad saw 'A Dirty Shame.' I felt bad about my father knowing what 'felching' was.
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.
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