Top 349 Quotes & Sayings by John Waters - Page 2

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

'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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.'

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

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.

'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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.'

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

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.'

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?

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.

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.

'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.'

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.

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

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

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.

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.'

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

To understand bad taste one must have very good taste.

Technique is nothing more than failed style.

As far as socially redeeming value, I hope I don't have any.

I like art that challenges you and makes a lot of people angry because they don't get it. Because they refuse to look at it properly. Rather than open their mind to the possibility of seeing something, they just resist. A lot of people think contemporary art makes them feel stupid. Because they are stupid. They're right. If you have contempt about contemporary art, you are stupid. You can be the most uneducated person in the world and completely appreciate contemporary art, because you see the rebellion. You see that it's trying to change things.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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