John Waters Quotes - Page 7

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!

There was a cultural war going on, the '60s was going on. All the film critics were square.

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

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.

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

Catholics have more extreme sex lives because they're taught that pleasure is bad for you. Who thinks it's normal to kneel down to a naked man who's nailed to a cross? It's like a bad leather bar.

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

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.

Aren't maids the ultimate art critics?

Censorship has been my best press agent my whole life.

I think the best article was the article about radical feminists being against transgender women. I found that the most fascinating article and I absolutely loved it. I love battles within the gay community or feminist community. I love radical theorists.

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.

If you're not sure you could love your children, please don't have them, because they might grow up and kill us.

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.

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 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.

Fifty years seems like a good anniversary. Even after I'm dead, how much better could I get than this? I mean, it's great, I'm not dead, so I get to see it.

I just went to Times Square and the underground movies, sometimes three a day. I did get my education. But I really believed then, in 1966, they would not have allowed me to make any of the movies I made. Today, you could make a snuff movie at NYU and get an A.

I never thought I'd be 52 years old. I don't think that anybody at 16 thinks like that.

If you purposefully look to shock people, it isn't funny. That's what 50 million dollar Hollywood comedies do; try to be shocking and dirty. They aren't really. It isn't enough to shock. It's easy to shock. Real surprise is what I'm after. Those early movies, we had drugs, which you weren't supposed to show. You weren't supposed to shoot up. We would make fun of hippies. I think that we were punk before there was punk.

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

You see a kid making a film on a cell phone. He doesn't know what he's doing either. But it comes out kind of good.

I think Chelsea Girls is a complete masterpiece and I think Andy's [Warhol] films are equally as good as the art. I think one day they will be considered equal. They aren't yet. They will be.

Roman Candles was shown in a church, and so was Eat Your Makeup, so was Mondo Trasho, and so was Multiple Maniacs (1970). It's hard to imagine that churches showed these movies but a few in the '60s, like St. Mark's Church, or on the Bowery, they always were left-wing.

Everyone wants to be called an outsider so I'm a proud insider. If I was young I'd be in my parents' house shutting down the government on my computer. The new delinquent is the hacker.