I loved moustaches. I used to draw myself with one. When I was 14, I was really into war and Van Gogh.
BILLY CHILDISHWe had the same kind of unemployment here as they had in the worst hit places in the North and you’re meant to be on a cushy wicket in the South.
More Billy Childish Quotes
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I’ve not been an admirer of contemporary music since punk rock went off the boil in 1977, but once a year I’ll listen to ‘Spiral Scratch’ by the Buzzcocks, or ‘Hippy Hippy Shake’ by the Swinging Blue Jeans. Otherwise, I can put up with Chopin or shakuhachi flute in the background.
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It is an artist’s duty to be on the wrong end of the see-saw.
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Bowie and McCartney arrived, and the biscuits and caviare started and I left immediately. I don’t like shouting across rooms, with people in shiny suits who look like used-car salesmen.
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The most challenging work I’ve seen of late is by The British Art Resistance. Their document, ‘A Call for Heroes in an Age of Cowards’, is apt in these days of witless chancers.
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Before 1999, Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas offered to get me exhibitions, but joining the Stuckists put a kaibosh on all that – because I wasn’t prepared to be controlled.
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Failure is fantastic, because you meet yourself and get to know your limitations. This is how I express myself, and I can’t do it any other way.
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I like being on the margins. You work better there.
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We are not actually in charge of life, yet we behave as if we are the masters of our own destiny. The realization of this fact is quite a hard one. The ridiculousness of our pomposity and presumption can only result in anger or humor.
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Being a fan of authentic Dada, I find today’s art – what I call ‘Bankers’ Dada’ – mind-numbingly dull.
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When I was better known than her, she put my name in that tent. I was asked to do Celebrity Big Brother, but why should I? We live in an age where fame is not related to what you do.
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I agreed to co-found the Stuckists to be allowed to say what I wanted, and I left the Stuckists because I didn’t really want to be in them in the first place.
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My favourite things are jokes, friendliness and feeling comfortable.
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I did not like prizes at school. I didn’t like tests or exams, or the 11+, or O-levels. Later I hated B.A.s and M.A.s. The reason I hated them is that I don’t like being tested, failed or falsely praised by anyone.
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I’m going to get a pair of wire-snips, and I’ve also started a new campaign to have blank CDs on jukeboxes so you can play the silence.
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One of my biggest problems in life has been my inability to lie.
BILLY CHILDISH