Top 180 John Waters Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “No comedy should be longer than 90 minutes. There’s no such thing as a good long joke.”

— John Waters

52. “I don’t trust anyone that hasn’t been to jail at least once in their life.”

— John Waters

53. “I would never do hard-core pornography, because it looks too much like open-heart surgery.”

— John Waters

54. “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.”

— John Waters

55. “I’ve bought the same used car from the same man since I was 16 – a Buick every time. They always work, I don’t care what color it is. I don’t want people to recognize my car in case I want to commit a crime.”

— John Waters

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

— John Waters

57. “As far as socially redeeming value, I hope I don’t have any.”

— John Waters

58. “I live in San Francisco, I live in Provincetown. They’re all the same, apart from Baltimore. Baltimore’s the only cheap place left.”

— John Waters

59. “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.”

— John Waters

60. “If I died tomorrow I’ve accomplished what I set out to do in my life. I enjoy making my movies, I enjoy doing what I do. I have a nice life.”

— John Waters

61. “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.”

— John Waters

62. “No matter what your sexual preference or gender, no one likes a man who is fussy about his looks. You can spend as much time as you want looking good. But don’t do it in public.”

— John Waters

63. “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.”

— John Waters

64. “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.”

— John Waters

65. “People that pick up hitchhikers I believe are basically good people that believe in other people and understand problems and don’t judge people. That’s always the kind of person I’m looking for.”

— John Waters

66. “I would describe myself as a writer that hopes to take you into my world and help you feel a little safer.”

— John Waters

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

— John Waters

68. “Wouldn’t you rather your kid be a drug dealer than a drug addict?”

— John Waters

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

— John Waters

70. “My films can be considered political action against the tyranny of good taste.”

— John Waters

71. “Fame is protection if you go to a scary place. Fame is fun. A lot of people don’t say anything and you don’t know they know who you are.”

— John Waters

72. “I’d love to sell out completely. It’s just that nobody has been willing to buy.”

— John Waters

73. “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.”

— John Waters

74. “I get dumber as the day goes along. Every second of the day that goes along, I get stupider.”

— John Waters

75. “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.”

— John Waters

76. “I mean, what is prison, really, except a good bar without the liquor?”

— John Waters

77. “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.”

— John Waters

78. “I understand why people want to look up their friends – usually they want to see what people they’ve wanted to have sex with look like.”

— John Waters

79. “A lot of kids are moving to Baltimore, because we have a great music scene and we’ve got edge. Come on down, we’ve got scary edge. But great edge – it’s still a city you can be a bohemian in.”

— John Waters

80. “Yeah, I know I should be fighting for gay rights, but who wants to join the army or get married anyway?”

— John Waters

81. “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.”

— John Waters

82. “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.”

— John Waters

83. “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.”

— John Waters

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

— John Waters

85. “I’m so lucky to be having a happy childhood as an adult.”

— John Waters

86. “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.”

— John Waters

87. “And yep, here’s yet one more heterosexual man who loves his wife. I’m telling you, it’s a trend! Women I know who are always complaining they can never meet a good straight man – maybe you’re living in the wrong part of the country. Maybe you need to hitchhike. Route 70 West could be the path to a great marriage. Go ahead, stick out your thumb for romance.”

— John Waters

88. “I think it’s all independent films. There aren’t any! If they were looking for me when I was making Polyester, then it’d be perfect, but they’re not. I’m not looking for that. TV is much bigger and better now; far more people see it.”

— John Waters

89. “Censorship has been my best press agent my whole life.”

— John Waters

90. “You don’t need fashion designers when you are young. Have faith in your own bad taste. Buy the cheapest thing in your local thrift shop – the clothes that are freshly out of style with even the hippest people a few years older than you. Get on the fashion nerves of your peers, not your parents – that is the key to fashion leadership.”

— John Waters

91. “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.”

— John Waters

92. “I liked speed. I was on black beauties all the time. Nothing bad happened to me. I didn’t become a drug addict because I always had to make a movie. We weren’t stoned when we made them; I was stoned when I made movies up. I did them all.”

— John Waters

93. “I didn’t become a drug addict because I always had to make a movie.”

— John Waters

94. “I can’t tell the difference between the best and the worst ’cause I realize not everybody wants to have sex in the middle of a demolition derby race in the car.”

— John Waters

95. “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.”

— John Waters

96. “William Castle and Alfred Hitchcock were the first director-personalities. Before then, nobody in America knew what a director was.”

— John Waters

97. “People vomitied at my movies; not because of the movie but because they were drunk. I took credit anyway.”

— John Waters

98. “Hairspray is the only really devious movie I ever made. The musical based on it is now being performed in practically every high school in America – and nobody seems to notice it’s a show with two men singing a love song to each other that also encourages white teen girls to date black guys. Pink Flamingos was preaching to the converted. But Hairspray is a Trojan horse: it snuck into Middle America and never got caught. You can do the same thing.”

— John Waters

99. “Life is a rotten lottery.”

— John Waters

100. “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.”

— John Waters