John Waters Quotes

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

Father, I am from a different egg than your other children. Think of me as a duckling raised by hens. I am not a domestic bird destined to spend his life in a chicken coop. the water that scares you rejuvenates me. For unlike you I can swim, and swim I shall. The ocean is my homeland. If you are with me, come to the ocean. If not, stop interfering with me and go back to the chicken coop.

I’m not insane, I’m voluntarily indifferent to conventional rationality.

Forbid a man to think for himself or to act for himself and you may add the joy of piracy and the zest of smuggling to his life.

Flip-flop, hippety-hop, offa your rocker and over the top, life's a fiction and the world's a lie, so put on some Creedence and let's get high.

The minute I was told what to do at any age, I did the opposite. Hopefully I'll do that for the rest of my life.

I refuse to act the way someone expects me to.

I wasn't interested in going to the school dances. I wasn't interested in going to the football games. What I wanted was to be in my room painting my walls and doing weird stuff. That's what I wanted and I got to do what I wanted, so that, to me, is my high school experience.

It's like, you can't have any fun, and if you do have fun, if you do your own thing, you're considered crazy and should be in a mental institution. Now, that's what I find creepy. I'm eccentric. I am not messed up.

I grew up with my cousins, who were as close as brothers, and frankly, I didn't like what girls were expected to do. I liked horseback riding, playing football, going to rodeos. I wanted to be in jeans all the time, and I couldn't figure out why I was supposed to conform to a certain standard, so I didn't.

I've always done everything at my disposal to avoid labeling what I do, or to avoid being labeled myself.

Other people will call me a rebel, but I just feel like I'm living my life and doing what I want to do. Sometimes people call that rebellion, especially when you're a woman.

There are those who dance to the rhythm that is played to them, those who only dance to their own rhythm, and those who don't dance at all.

I'm not interested in meeting people's expectations, and I'm not interested in pleasing people.

Rock n' roll to me is all about freedom of thought and to be whatever you want to be.

I'm not a freak. I'm not really crazy or anything. I don't think I'm really abnormal. It's just, like anybody else, I have interests I cultivate, and one of my interests is not getting too used to things. I've sacrificed a lot of things in my life in order to keep that sense of things being unfamiliar.

Punk is musical freedom. It's saying, doing and playing what you want. In Webster's terms, 'nirvana' means freedom from pain, suffering and the external world, and that's pretty close to my definition of Punk Rock.

Whoso would be a man must be a non-conformist.

Dissent is the mark of freedom.

Even when I was rebelling against my father, the point was to follow my own intuition and instinct.

Conforming happens so naturally that we can forget how powerful it is. But the thing that makes us human are those times we listen to the whispers of our soul and allow ourselves to be pulled in another direction.

Conformity is painful. You know, it's too tight. Conformity leads to rebellion. So a desire for happiness is in direct conflict with a desire for freedom.

I don't like rules of any kind. And I seek people who break rules with happiness - and not bringing pain to themselves.

I have a natural tendency to resist conformity.

I don't imagine myself, my work, or my life, fitting into any kind of standardized path. In fact, the idea of there even being a standard freaks me out a lot.