Quotes from John Waters

Censorship has been my best press agent my whole life.

In sixth grade, I went to a very good private school, and I did learn there. I learned how to read and write. If I had quit school in sixth grade, I would know as much as I know today and would have made one more movie. By the time I got to college, I was so bored and angry.

They all want you to make a movie for under a million dollars, which I don't want to. I don't want to be a faux radical film-maker at 70. I did that. I don't need to do it again.

When I first saw 'House on Haunted Hill' as a kid in Baltimore, and the skeleton went out on the wire, and the thousand kids in the audience went crazy... My whole life, I've tried to at least equal that cinema anarchy. I came close with the end of 'Pink Flamingos,' but I didn't tie with it.

What fashion has started from hackers? They have bad posture, and they don't go out. I wish I had a hacker boyfriend - they stay at home up in the bedroom.

I think I'm probably the only person that, when the parents lent me money to make the movie, they wished I had not paid them back. They could have said 'No,' and it would have ended, and I would have gotten a real job.

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.

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.

Things are going great in every part of my life except movies. That's okay. I've got a lot of other parts of my life. I've made 15 movies. You can see any one of my movies and it says the same thing.

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.

I never got along in school really - I already knew what I wanted to do. I have never in my life got a paycheck from anywhere in the world that asked if I went to school.

People looked at my early pictures and called them the most disgusting things ever, and now 'Hairspray' is being done at every school in Britain and America.

I always had a work ethic. And I think I very much got that from my father and my mother.

Always, European art cinema has been the most threatening and the grimmest and the most transgressive, I think.

...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.

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

I've had it with being nice, understanding, fair and hopeful. I feel like being negative all day. The chip on my shoulder could sink the QE2. I've got an attitude problem and nobody better get in my way...I'm in a bad mood and the whole stupid little world is gonna pay!

I thank God I was raised Catholic, so sex will always be dirty.

Being rich is not about how much money you have or how many homes you own; it's the freedom to buy any book you want without looking at the price and wondering if you can afford it.

If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em!

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.

Whenever it's on it's like having somebody in my house that I want to get rid of and they won't leave. I hate the sound of it. All that noise and light coming from a piece of furniture.

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.

Being rich is not about how much money you have or how many homes you own; it's the freedom to buy any book you want without looking at the price and wondering if you can afford it.