Quotes from John Waters

New York was scarier than Baltimore ever was. It was terrible in the '70s. I'm glad they cleaned it up. I got mugged; I had to go to the hospital. Every time you went out, you got robbed. It was horrible. You can't imagine.

I've been an art collector since the Sixties, and I kept it very separate from my showbusiness career. I've had art shows since the early Nineties, a museum show that travelled to four countries. I've had three or four art books; it's just another way I have to tell stories.

I'm thrilled to have a completely new audience that I can get from Court TV, without it being my own trial. That was the only other way I would have gotten it.

I don't mind snobs, if they have a reason to be a snob.

Everyone's sex life is funny except your own. Every person's is, and yours never is.

It's still possible to make movies. Not so much on YouTube. On YouTube, you wind up with an advertising career. What movie became infamous and a hit because of YouTube? Maybe there is one. I don't know.

My mother was Catholic, my father not. I went to Catholic high school. Every form of education failed me. I was trouble.

I wish something on T.V. would trouble me. Then maybe I would watch it.

I don't trust anyone that hasn't been to jail at least once in their life. You should have been, or something's the matter with you.

Wealth is walking into any bookshop and buying any book you want without looking at the price tag.

One Christmas, Dennis Dermody, the movie critic of 'Paper,' gave me 'Rock Hudson: A Gathering of Friends,' the master invitation list from Rock Hudson's memorial service. It's so great. Everyone's in it, with personal addresses all bound into a book. Someone else once gave me Ike Turner's will. I get great stuff.

People who want to act rich when they're upper-middle class. They try too hard.

You go to school to figure out who you want to be and how you can do it, and [maybe] I should have, because the films would probably be technically better.

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.

There was a cultural war going on, the '60s was going on. All the film critics were square.

You have to think of a new way to make something new. And the biggest sin - you can never try too hard. You can never look like you're just trying to shock people, 'cause that's simple. But making people laugh is the hard part.

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!' I always say to Johnny Knoxville, 'How do you do it? You sort of do the same thing we did, except you made millions, and I made hundreds.'

I grew up in Baltimore, which is, you know, a city of extremes certainly, but my parents were very conservative. But they made me feel safe, and even though they were mortified at what I was doing, they encouraged it. I think because they thought, what else could I do?

To me, the most important thing is the script. I would never make a movie that I didn't write. I wouldn't know how to.

Do I like how digital films look? Sometimes, but sometimes it looks flat, and ugly.

The good guys in my movies mind their own business, and they don't judge other people. And the bad guys are jealous; they judge other people without knowing the whole story. They want all the attention, and they're mean spirited.

I've always been close to my family. I've got a lot of nieces and nephews, but I'm a good uncle.

Underground, raw movies that come out of nowhere and change everything - they aren't slick-looking. But I have nothing against slick-looking as long as the scripts are funny.

Science fiction is something I never understood.