488 Quotes by John Waters

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.

New York was the last place that my movies caught on. I didn't make underground movies in New York, and in the 1960s, they were very snobby about that, because the whole scene was here.

The first real thing was Divine as Jackie Kennedy [in Eat Your Makeup]. His mother found the bloody Jackie Kennedy outfit in the boot of his car and said, 'What is this?" and Divine said, "I am Jackie Kennedy!" His mother just changed the subject; she didn't know what to say.

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.

I have spoken, and I was understood. It's not like I'm a tragic person who wasn't understood. All those books are in print, all those movies are still out there, the audience gets younger. So I don't have that "I've got to do one thing before I die." I did it.

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.

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

Hairspray is the only movie I made that's subversive, because they're doing it in every high school in America. A man's playing a woman, and two men sing a love song to each other.

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.