488 Quotes by John Waters

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

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.

At the premiere of Hairspray on Broadway, Harvey Fierstein’s mom said to my mom, “Didn’t we raise great sons?” and my mother just started sobbing, because I’m sure they’d both been through other nights when people didn’t say that.

I think that nobody gets mad at me anymore, no matter what I say, because I don’t think I’m mean. I am interested in what’s next.

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.

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.

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.

You should want to be rich at 40, at 20 you should want to kill the rich; it’s the right of youth.

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.