But there’s no way round it-commercial success is a mark of failure for a graffiti artist. We’re not supposed to be embraced in that way. When you look at how society rewards so many of the wrong people, it’s hard not to view financial reimbursement as a badge of self-serving mediocrity.
BANKSYI tell myself I use art to promote dissent, but maybe I am just using dissent to promote my art. I plead not guilty to selling out. But I plead it from a bigger house than I used to live in.
More Banksy Quotes
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It’s impossible to predict which paintings will last and which won’t. In New Orleans I painted on a dilapidated shop in a street littered with abandoned cars and rotting mattresses, then two hours later the piece was gone. It turned out I’d picked the side of a crack house and the proprietor didn’t like the attention.
BANKSY -
You owe the companies nothing. You especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
BANKSY -
The one thing you can rely on is if you get disturbed halfway through a painting and it looks a bit naff, then someone will preserve that piece, remove it and a few months later it’ll be paraded round Sotheby’s by people wearing white gloves.
BANKSY -
When he time comes to leave, just walk away quietly and don’t make any fuss.
BANKSY -
You’re mind is working at its best when you’re being paranoid. You explore every avenue and possibility of your situation at high speed with total clarity.
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We don’t need any more heroes; we just need someone to take out the recycling.
BANKSY -
Anyone who believes in capital punishment should be shot
BANKSY -
If you don’t own a train company then you go and paint on one instead… it all comes from that thing at school when you had to have name tags in the back of something… that makes it belong to you. You can own half the city by scribbling your name over it.
BANKSY -
The holy grail is to spend less time making the picture than it takes people to look at it.
BANKSY -
If it doesn’t matter, get rid of it. If you can’t get rid of it, it matters.
BANKSY -
The one thing you can rely on is if you get disturbed halfway through a painting and it looks a bit naff, then someone will preserve that piece, remove it and a few months later it’ll be paraded round Sotheby’s by people wearing white gloves.
BANKSY -
Graffiti is only dangerous in the mind of three types of people; politicians, advertising executives and graffiti writers.
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If you feel dirty, insignificant or unloved, then rats are a good role model. They exist without permission, they have no respect for the hierarchy of society, and they have sex 50 times a day.
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Sometimes I feel so sick at the state of the world I can’t even finish my second apple pie.
BANKSY -
Sometimes I feel so sick at the state of the world I can’t even finish my second apple pie.
BANKSY






