Top 180 John Waters Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 4 of 4

151. “I think that young people understand me perfectly. I think that’s the luckiest thing about my career, that I get older and they get younger, and it didn’t stop with my generation.”

— John Waters

152. “I think I technically learned some things, hopefully. But I go to the movies for characters and story and a berserk vision.”

— John Waters

153. “Everything makes you who you are, so I was lucky that I had a good family that was horrified by what I wanted to do but was also supportive of it, right to the very end.”

— John Waters

154. “I believe that if a seven-year old kid has heard of Naked Lunch and is daring enough to want to read it, he’s old enough to read it.”

— John Waters

155. “Terrible things always seemed to happen to hitchhikers in movies – including my own. It has always been glamorous and dangerous and scary and sexy.”

— John Waters

156. “I couch-surfed for years. But I always wanted to live in Baltimore; I still do. If I had to choose, it would always be Baltimore.”

— John Waters

157. “There was a cultural war going on, the ’60s was going on. All the film critics were square.”

— John Waters

158. “If I could pick my own death, it would be on a roller coaster that jumps the tracks and careens into a packed crowd at a cotton candy stand at a state fair.”

— John Waters

159. “I tried heroin. I shot up in high school, but I just thought it was so dreary: puking and nodding.”

— John Waters

160. “I’m perpetual tourist, and that’s the best way to travel. Nobody gets used to you, you make new friends without having to hear anyone’s everyday problems, and you jet back still feeling like a know-it-all.”

— John Waters

161. “I haven’t committed all the crimes in my movies, I would have gotten the death penalty many years ago if I had.”

— John Waters

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

— John Waters

163. “I’m alive, I think, and so many of my friends are not. I may be nuts to be doing this, but I’m kind of proud of myself. I am having an adventure. I like my life. Even if I have to stand here for the rest of it.”

— John Waters

164. “Shutting down governments on your computer is just as much as fun as going to a riot at Yale.”

— John Waters

165. “Watching a movie should be like hunting. Out of context, every image of the cinema is yours for a split second. Take them before they bury it.”

— John Waters

166. “I’m an old person because I still buy DVDs. I have every one of my albums and 45s – I even have a couple of 33s and I do have a turntable. But I must admit, I don’t listen to vinyl today. But I listen to all types of music.”

— John Waters

167. “Pot came first when I was young. But I did the work. It wasn’t a battle of what came first. They went together like “love and marriage, horse and carriage!””

— John Waters

168. “I look out through the eyeholes and feel exactly the way Michael Jackson’s son Blanket must have felt.”

— John Waters

169. “I have no interest in ever making a movie I didn’t write. If they were going to take my house away, then I guess I might have to. But my agent knows not to even bother sending me the scripts.”

— John Waters

170. “It’s always up to other people to say if something is art. I hate it when people say, “I’m an artist.” I think, well, I’ll be the judge of that. And I don’t think “artist” is a job description. It’s a critique, a favorable critique, that someone else might apply to your work.”

— John Waters

171. “All ideology can be embraced if the leader dresses well.”

— John Waters

172. “Coke didn’t last long enough; it gave me a hangover for two weeks for being high for ten minutes.”

— John Waters

173. “I must admit, even my fans everywhere I go in the world – just this week I was in London and Glasgow and the week before I was in Des Moines – my fans all look the same in all those cities – they look great!”

— John Waters

174. “Everybody should wish they had home movies of themselves, acting out their lunacy on LSD.”

— John Waters

175. “I always say you need something weird on your face and some good shoes and nobody looks in the middle.”

— John Waters

176. “I never thought I had more fun when I was young than kids are having today. I think they have just as much fun. It’s a different way to have fun.”

— John Waters

177. “I keep on having ideas and developments. Some happen and some don’t, but I still always have a way of telling a story.”

— John Waters

178. “I never thought I’d be 52 years old. I don’t think that anybody at 16 thinks like that.”

— John Waters

179. “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.”

— John Waters

180. “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.”

— John Waters

181. “It isn’t enough to shock. It’s easy to shock. Real surprise is what I’m after.”

— John Waters

182. “There’s a prison there, too, which always makes me feel included.”

— John Waters

183. “Anyone from my past I’m interested in, I’ve already stalked their homes. I like to go outside.”

— John Waters

184. “I am on the road all the time. Whether I’m in Paris or in a small college town in Texas, I can’t tell the difference, and that’s good. You don’t have to leave where you were born to be cool anymore.”

— John Waters

185. “I learned that people like my work because I praise things that others don’t like.”

— John Waters

186. “People still come to Baltimore and say, “I didn’t realize you made documentaries.””

— John Waters

187. “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.”

— John Waters

188. “I think the extremes are something that’s really interesting to see coalesce in movies.”

— John Waters

189. “Hitchhiking, intrinsically, is sexual and dangerous. At the same time I never really felt scared. I was scared that nobody would pick me up and that I’d be waiting by the side of the road for a week.”

— John Waters

190. “The thing is, all the stuff that people hate about the art world, I love. I embrace all the elitism. I think it’s hilarious. I love impenetrable art writing. I make fun of it, but I make fun of things I love. I don’t hate the art world at all. I find it fascinating. It’s a secret club; you have to learn the rules.”

— John Waters

191. “How come there’s no terrorism with humor, which is a great way to humiliate your enemy? It’s a great time for that.”

— John Waters

192. “When you’re feeling despondent just put on more country music. There are thousands of slit-your-wrist hillbilly songs that will make you laugh at your self-indulgence and ultimately cheer you up.”

— John Waters

193. “Listen to your political enemies, especially the smart ones, and then figure out a way to make them laugh.”

— John Waters

194. “When the worst thing that can happen to you does, I try to be a friend.”

— John Waters

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

— John Waters

196. “JOHN WATERS: In Cry-Baby Traci played a sexpot-which is always the best way to rid yourself of an image, by playing it and making fun of it. That’s what Johnny Deep did, too. He was on Jump Street, and he hated playing a teen idol, so I said, “stick with us; we’ll kill that.” And we did – in the right way, you know?”

— John Waters

197. “Nothing shouts midlife crisis louder than driving a convertible.”

— John Waters