John Waters Quotes

Getting your screenplay right is the most important thing you'll ever do on your film.

I can't imagine directing from someone else's script.

I want to make my own films from my own scripts based on stories I want to tell, but they take time to put together.

I don't see myself directing things I don't write because, to me, directing was just an extension of the writing process.

I can't do a film if I don't start with the writing.

I wrote 'All is Lost' while editing 'Margin Call'. I did that long before I knew if I was ever going to get to make another movie.

All the director wants is their idea of the movie to be believed in.

I'm a writer, and the subject is less important than the act of writing itself.

I've never actually directed anything I haven't made up. I've never adapted anything.

I love being a writer-director. I couldn't imagine directing without writing it. You have to write and tell your stories - that's what directing is to me.

Writing and directing your own film, for me, has been the best experience of my life.

I always write the script by myself.

I think it's always good for the author to stay a good cattle prod's distance from the actual moviemaking.

Becoming a producer enables you to empower yourself, to make the film that you want to make. I have desires to make movies - I have movies I'm developing, and things that I'm interested in.

It's not so much that I want to direct but that I have to. When I write something it terrifies me that if I give it to someone else and it doesn't turn out as it could have done, I'd feel as if I'd orphaned my baby.

I remember that when I got to NYU, everyone was writing scripts. But I was 18 at the time, and when you write a script, so much of it is about what you pull from life, and this sounds sort of cheesy, but I felt like I didn't have enough life experience at that point to write a movie.

When you write a movie, you have a hundred collaborators. But when you write a novel, it's yours.

One thing I like about trying to write is that I can possibly write myself a role. Otherwise, you're at the mercy of whatever roles are out there that people are willing to give to you.

In cinema, the leading player is the director.

There comes a time as you continue to write and work on scripts and screenplays where you realize that you have opinions about the next step of the process, and you kind of want more control over the translation from page to screen.

For me, the most important thing is the writing - and certainly the director. But if the writing isn't there, it doesn't matter who the director is!

I'm not put off so much by first-time directors if the script is great. If the script isn't there, I'm not there.

In my own life, I've written scripts that I want to direct, so I would love to take my own creativity in a way where I could tell my own story. That does inspire me, the idea of becoming a director.

I take time to write my script, if I have more scripts, I will make more movies.

You can't just express yourself and it becomes a movie. You have to get beyond that.