Love Quote by John Waters

John Waters turns the rock-star sin of "selling out" into a punchline that doubles as a mission statement. The line flips the usual moral panic: instead of insisting he’s too pure to be bought, he claims he’s available at full price. The joke lands because it exposes how credibility works in pop culture. We pretend authenticity is a refusal of commerce, even as we measure success by the size of the check. Waters shrugs at that hypocrisy and dares the audience to admit it, too.

The subtext is classic Waters: camp as critique. By framing "sell out" as a failed transaction, he reduces artistic integrity to market demand, which is exactly how the industry behaves while publicly pretending otherwise. There’s also a sly class and taste jab: if no one wants to "buy", it’s not because Waters lacks ambition, it’s because his brand of filth, deviance, and outsider humor doesn’t fit the polite storefront. He’s not absolving himself; he’s indicting the gatekeepers.

Context matters: Waters came up selling transgressive cinema from the margins, cultivating a cult audience long before "edgy" became a streaming-category aesthetic. The quote captures the tightrope he’s always walked: courting mainstream attention without sanding down the weird. It’s funny because it’s true, and it’s sharp because it refuses the comforting myth that art and commerce are opposing teams.