John Quotes

An underground hit didn't make any money and it cost a dollar to get in.

It reinforced everything that I believe. I am an optimist. I believe in the goodness of people.

I was as equally influenced by Bergman as I was [low-budget sexploitation filmmaker].

I think that young people understand me perfectly. I think that's the luckiest thing about my career, that I get older and they get younger, and it didn't stop with my generation.

Ever feel like killing somebody just to see if you could get away with it? Sure, you have. Everybody has little things that get on their nerves.

When I was young, no one wanted to be one; now even the President of the United States would call himself an outsider. So now I'm for insiders.

I never thought I had more fun when I was young than kids are having today. I think they have just as much fun. It's a different way to have fun.

I have no interest in ever making a movie I didn't write. If they were going to take my house away, then I guess I might have to. But my agent knows not to even bother sending me the scripts.

Fame is protection if you go to a scary place. Fame is fun. A lot of people don't say anything and you don't know they know who you are.

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.

Shutting down governments on your computer is just as much as fun as going to a riot at Yale.

When I started making movies about weird people, I knew they were weird, I was infected with irony, and I wanted New York to notice.

I am on the road all the time. Whether I'm in Paris or in a small college town in Texas, I can't tell the difference, and that's good. You don't have to leave where you were born to be cool anymore.

Everything makes you who you are, so I was lucky that I had a good family that was horrified by what I wanted to do but was also supportive of it, right to the very end.

Stupid is never that entertaining. You can be stupid and sexy, stupid and funny but he's just plain stupid. That is not remarkable, that's what I mean.

I keep on having ideas and developments. Some happen and some don't, but I still always have a way of telling a story.

I couch-surfed for years. But I always wanted to live in Baltimore; I still do. If I had to choose, it would always be Baltimore.

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.

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.

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.

I love hipsters! Yes, I think they're hilarious. The really cute ones try to look ugly just to prove "I can't be ugly." Normcore was kind of funny too.

I don't think I had a bad influence on anybody. I made people feel better about themselves.

I didn't become a drug addict because I always had to make a movie.

I think [parents] became very proud, even though they were mortified by the early films because no one liked them.

Baltimore never changes much. People aren't impressed by anything. It's great; it's not a trendy town.

I never thought I'd be 52 years old. I don't think that anybody at 16 thinks like that.

I haven't committed all the crimes in my movies, I would have gotten the death penalty many years ago if I had.

I make independent movies. I don't know how to do anything else. I don't know any other job that I could really get.

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.

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.

I think social justice is important. I think it's not fair.

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.

Terrible things always seemed to happen to hitchhikers in movies - including my own. It has always been glamorous and dangerous and scary and sexy.

I hitchhiked at high school. My parents thought was a perfectly normal thing to do even though God knows I got blown a lot of times riding home from school.

Time marches on and I don't care how people watch my movies as long as they see them. I don't care if they're on their phone.

Everyone wants to be called an outsider so I'm a proud insider. If I was young I'd be in my parents' house shutting down the government on my computer. The new delinquent is the hacker.

It isn't enough to shock. It's easy to shock. Real surprise is what I'm after.

Pot came first when I was young. But I did the work. It wasn't a battle of what came first. They went together like "love and marriage, horse and carriage!"

You see a kid making a film on a cell phone. He doesn't know what he's doing either. But it comes out kind of good.

I think Chelsea Girls is a complete masterpiece and I think Andy's [Warhol] films are equally as good as the art. I think one day they will be considered equal. They aren't yet. They will be.

If you purposefully look to shock people, it isn't funny. That's what 50 million dollar Hollywood comedies do ; try to be shocking and dirty.

The only way I've learned to change anyone's mind politically is to make them laugh. My whole career has been about that.

I'll have pot in my home for guests - I'm polite! - but I don't sit around and smoke by myself, ever. Not like I did when I was young.

Many hundred-million-dollar Hollywood comedies aren't any good. They're trying to shock you.

I never rewatch the great films of my favorite directors because I'm afraid they won't hold up.

I used to joke that I was trying to sell out, and nobody would buy me.

I'd love to sell out completely. It's just that nobody has been willing to buy.

Humor is how you change people's opinions, and if you can make someone laugh, they'll listen, even if they hate you.

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.

And I seek people who break rules with happiness — and not bringing pain to themselves.