John Waters Quotes

"I stand there sipping and savoring for over ten minutes, thinking of the man I read about who weighed six hundred pounds from drinking "vast amounts of tap water.

You don’t need fashion designers when you are young. Have faith in your own bad taste. Buy the cheapest thing in your local thrift shop - the clothes that are freshly out of style with even the hippest people a few years older than you. Get on the fashion nerves of your peers, not your parents - that is the key to fashion leadership. Ill-fitting is always stylish. But be more creative - wear your clothes inside out, backward, upside down. Throw bleach in a load of colored laundry. Follow the exact opposite of the dry cleaning instructions inside the clothes that cost the most in your thrift shop. Don’t wear jewelry - stick Band-Aids on your wrists or make a necklace out of them. Wear Scotch tape on the side of your face like a bad face-lift attempt. Mismatch your shoes. Best yet, do as Mink Stole used to do: go to the thrift store the day after Halloween, when the children’s trick-or-treat costumes are on sale, buy one, and wear it as your uniform of defiance.

Collect books, even if you don't plan on reading them right away. Nothing is more important than an unread library.

If you go home with someone and they don't have books, don't fuck them.

To understand bad taste one must have very good taste.

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

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 respect everything I make fun of.

It wasn't until I started reading ... that I discovered you could be insane and happy and have a good life without being like everybody else.

Her jaws are no match for this frightening pest, who, temporarily blinded in panic, begins biting her tongue with its tiny bloodsucking mouth.

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!

Life is nothing if you're not obsessed.

Who's to blame when your kid goes nuts? Is it a blessing to not have children? 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' became a hit cult book for women without offspring who were finally able to admit they didn't want to give birth. They felt complete, thank you very much, and lived in silent resentment for years at other women's pious, unwanted sympathy toward them for not having babies. With even gay couples having children these days, aren't happy heterosexual women who don't want to have kids the most ostracized of us all? To me they are beautiful feminists. If you're not sure you could love your children, please don't have them, because they might grow up and kill us.

And finally, count your blessings. You got through college. You didn’t commit suicide, O.D., or have a nervous breakdown, and let’s remember the ones who did. It’s time to get busy. It’s your turn to cause trouble.

I'd rather have a daughter in a whorehouse than a son in the police force,' Esther used to rage to anyone who would listen.