John Waters
It isn't enough to shock. It's easy to shock. Real surprise is what I'm after.Collection: Real
I'm always amazed at friends who say they try to read at night in bed but always end up falling asleep. I have the opposite problem. If a book is good I can't go to sleep, and stay up way past my bedtime, hooked on the writing. Is anything better than waking up after a late-night read and diving right back into the plot before you even get out of bed to brush your teeth?Collection: Book
I make independent movies. I don't know how to do anything else. I don't know any other job that I could really get.Collection: Jobs
Get on the fashion nerves of your peers, not your parents - that is the key to fashion leadership.Collection: Fashion
I go to colleges all the time in America, and everyone's gay, and I think how can this be? And it's only in rich schools. In poor schools, nobody's gay.Collection: School
I'm trying to do of a certain attitude in life. I'm against separatism. I'm for everyone to gather. I'm for everyone lunatic to hang out together. I want to hear somebody else's bad night, not just mine.Collection: Attitude
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.Collection: Friday
I get dumber as the day goes along. Every second of the day that goes along, I get stupider.Collection: Every Second
I went to the Vatican once - it was a bad idea. I went into the bookshop and I bought hideous, pious postcards and then I asked for a receipt, and the nun said, "We don't give receipts at the Vatican." Which threw me into a rage of like, "I guess not, so you can take this money and funnel it into anti-homosexual groups!" People had to drag me out of there. It's not good for me to go into the Vatican.Collection: Ideas
Once I had a shrink who said, "Your parents are the fuel you run on," because I was raised in the tyranny of good taste. If my parents hadn't taught me all that, I couldn't have made fun of it. So I thank them, and they were loving. It takes a long time to realize that they made me feel safe when I lived a life which was very not safe.Collection: Running
I don't like heroin, unless you're a jazz musician and then you have to be on it because jazz is the sound of heroin.Collection: Musician
I think it's important to visit people in prison. And if you know anyone in prison, I would encourage you very much to visit them. They're a good audience! I always get good letters from prisoners. I don't usually answer them because I have a lot going on in my life, but I get some really good ones, I get some really good letters from prison.Collection: Thinking
I've signed peoples' parole cards at book signings and it's very touching.Collection: Book
[My catholic education] sticked with me. It caused the rage I had to make 'Pink Flamingos.'Collection: Catholic
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.Collection: People
Nothing is more impotent than an unread library.Collection: Library
Some call me director, producer, filmmaker. I prefer to call myself pube-king.Collection: Kings
You have to remember that it is impossible to commit a crime while reading a book.Collection: Book
With Hairspray, we had a great experience. I always think of the last time I saw Divine: He was in the last booth in the back of the Odeon. Now every time I go in there, I look at that table. It was a wonderful night.Hairspray had been out a week; it was a hit. If I had to pick a night that was going to be the last night.Collection: Night
To me, racist jokes are not funny. I am politically correct, in a weird way. I like to push the boundaries that are politically correct.Collection: Racist Jokes
My hobby is extreme Catholic behavior - before the Reformation.Collection: Catholic
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.Collection: Tattoo
You have to think of a new way to completely surprise people who think they're hip. I always said you could make an NC-17 movie with no sex and no violence. Now I don't know what that could possibly be, but if you could think it up, you'd have a hit.Collection: Thinking
I built a career on negative reviews. I didn't get a good review ever until Fran Lebowitz gave me a good review in Interview. That was the first good review I got in 10 years.Collection: Years
When I started my goal was to make a successful underground movie. I started making movies in the mid-60s. Underground cinema then only lasted about two or three years.Collection: Successful
Wouldn't you rather your kid be a drug dealer than a drug addict?Collection: Kids
I don't believe in depression. There's no such thing. It's an invention. It's bullshit, it's a cop out.Collection: Believe
I'm here today because of LSD. LSD gave me the confidence to be who I am today. Completely.Collection: Who I Am
I always feel bad when I meet celebrities and I can just tell every single thing about their personal life, I just say, "Well, they don't have friends. Or a therapist." Once you have both, you don't have to share everything with people, because then you don't have a private life, and then you're, I guess, a workaholic.Collection: People
Everybody should wish they had home movies of themselves, acting out their lunacy on LSD.Collection: Home
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.Collection: Giving
Well cult is a word you would never say in Hollywood. 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!"Collection: Trying
I was thinking about sort of the similarities between "art movies" and lowbrow movies like kitschy sexploitation films. I think they share certain qualities, whether they're hyper-stylized or overly emotive or just very visual.Collection: Art
God knows if you could start a new sex act that's more important than making a good movie.Collection: Sex
People who want to act rich when they're upper-middle class. They try too hard.Collection: People
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.Collection: Mother
I think the extremes are something that's really interesting to see coalesce in movies.Collection: Thinking
If you want to be an artist, go to every art gallery, if you want to be in movies, see movies! You have to participate in whichever world you're trying to enter! You have to know what's going on. You can be the best artist in the world but if you don't know one thing about which gallery to go to, you're never going to get it shown in the right place. Learn a little bit about the business of whichever art you're trying to get into. Without it, you will be lost.Collection: Art
There are little things that get on my nerves, like people who have reading material in their powder room. When you go in someone’s house, and next to the toilet they have a huge basket of magazines, I find that repellent. I recommend against straining while reading.Collection: Reading
What happened is that in the middle of my life I went away and in my own sense of hubris, pride, cynicism, thought, I am an autonomous being in the world, I can control things, I am God.' But my experiment at being God failed! And they do have a great saying in AA: 'Get down off the cross, we need the wood!' And the important thing is to realise you are not the centre of the universe, you are not God.Collection: Pride
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.Collection: Cities
The worst thing you can do is make a cult movie. That means you got three great reviews and nobody went. An art film means it got a lot of good reviews and nobody went. There is no such thing as a counter culture now. What used to be considered that is commercial now.Collection: Art
Coke didn't last long enough; it gave me a hangover for two weeks for being high for ten minutes.Collection: Hangover
Anyone from my past I'm interested in, I've already stalked their homes. I like to go outside.Collection: Home
It's been 50 years since I was on the roof of my parents' house shooting Hag in a Black Leather Jacket when I didn't even know there was such a thing as editing. I thought you just shot the film and showed it. That's exactly what I did. I'm not that different 50 years later.Collection: Editing
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.Collection: Running
The further away I am from water, the less well I do!Collection: Water
Insider can be more ludicrous. How did I ever end up [as one]? Carsick [Waters's book on hitchhiking] was on the New York Times best-seller list for five weeks. [One of the characters was] a singing asshole that does a duet with Connie Francis! Times have changed. That's mainstream, in a weird way.Collection: New York
Even illegal weapons have lost their panache. Zip guns and shanks were at least homemade. Where is the craft in a grade-schooler firing a magnum? What is the world coming to? It's not even bad to be a communist anymore!Collection: Gun