John Waters Quotes

“Sometimes I wish I was a woman, just so I could have an abortion.”

“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 respect everything I make fun of.”

“Maybe there is no better novel in the world than Denton Welch's In Youth Is Pleasure. Just holding it in my hands, so precious, so beyond gay, so deliciously subversive, is enough to make illiteracy a worse social crime than hunger.”

“Without Obsession, Life Is Nothing”

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

“Life is nothing if you're not obsessed.”

“Life is nothing without a good sense of humor.”

“You have to remember that it is impossible to commit a crime while reading a book.”

“I always wanted to be a juvenile delinquent but my parents wouldn't let me.”

“Nothing is more impotent than an unread library.”

“Contemporary art hates you.”

“I could never kill myself. I approve of suicide if you have horrible health. Otherwise it's the ultimate hissy fit.”

“To me, beauty is looks you can never forget. A face should jolt, not soothe.”

“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.”

“My hobby is extreme Catholic behavior -- BEFORE the Reformation.”

“Not wanting anyone to pop my bubble by speaking to me, I immediately began reading Lesbian Nuns, and that did the trick. No one attempted small talk.”

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

“I imagine Johnny Mathis hates Bin Laden as much as I do, but could Johnny agree Bin Laden had a better speechwriter than Bush? "Axis of Evil"? Come on. "A swimmer in the ocean does not fear the rain" is much more powerful propaganda. Poetic, even.”

“Wouldn't you rather your kid be a drug dealer than a drug addict?”

“Cheer up. You never know — maybe something awful will happen tomorrow.”

“Parents should worry if their children haven't been arrested by the time they turn sixteen. Being a juvenile delinquent is a birthright and as much a part of healthy adolescence as smoking cigarettes or getting pimples.”

“Going to a sensational murder trial is the only way I can relax.”

“I would never want to live anywhere but Baltimore… It's as if every eccentric in the South decided to move north, ran out of gas in Baltimore, and decided to stay. No one moves here.”

“To me, camp is two older queens talking about Rita Hayworth under a Tiffany's lampshade.”

“Waters might, once upon a time, have been a candidate to be the American Buñuel, especially when he had the raw hatred of Divine under his command…”

“I'd never trust anyone who hadn't spent at least one night of his youth in the local jail. The more hell you raise as a teen-ager, the sweeter your memories will be.”

“All people look better under arrest.”

“I stopped taking drugs when I realized that pot smelled bad and LSD trips were becoming like TV reruns. I had had enough inner journeys — I felt I knew myself well enough, thank you.”

“I would never want to film hard-core pornography, because it always looks like open-heart surgery to me.”

“To understand bad taste one must have very good taste.”

“To me, bad taste is what entertainment is all about. If someone vomits while watching one of my films, it's like getting a standing ovation. But one must remember that there is such a thing as good bad taste and bad bad taste.”

“How could you think of such awful things?" liberal critics always ask. "How else could I possibly amuse myself?”

“[I] pride myself on the fact that my work has no socially redeeming value.”