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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.

Banksy

Gaza is often described as ‘the world’s largest open air prison’ because no-one is allowed to enter or leave. But that seems a bit unfair to prisons – they don’t have their electricity and drinking water cut off randomly almost every day.
BANKSY

Air Cutting Drinking
I’ve never really understood why people sleep. Wasting a third of your life and becoming vulnerable for almost 8 hours every night. Doesn’t seem very appealing to me.
BANKSY

Night People Sleep
Stencils are good for two reasons; one – they’re quick; two – they annoy idiots.
BANKSY

Annoying Idiot Two
Nobody ever listened to me until they didn’t know who I was
BANKSY

Graffiti Knows Piece Wall
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

Car New Orleans Two
Become good at cheating and you never need to become good at anything else.
BANKSY

Art Cheating Deep Thought
I don’t think you should have to pay to look at graffiti. You should only pay if you want to get rid of it.
BANKSY

Graffiti Pay Think Thinking
I need someone to protect me from all the measures they take in order to protect me.
BANKSY

Art Need Order
Some people represent authority without ever possessing any of their own.
BANKSY

Authority People Piece Wall
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.
BANKSY

Artist Self Views
Brandalism Any advertisement in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It belongs to you. It’s yours to take, rearrange and re-use. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
BANKSY

Giving Rocks Space
Fight the fighters, not their wars.
BANKSY

Fighter Fighting War
Stencils are good for two reasons; one – they’re quick; two – they annoy idiots.
BANKSY

Annoying Idiot Two
Sometimes I feel so sick at the state of the world I can’t even finish my second apple pie.
BANKSY

Apples Pie Sick
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

Citiy Name School
I’d been painting rats for three years before someone said ‘that’s clever it’s an anagram of art’ and I had to pretend I’d known that all along.
BANKSY

Art Clever Years
Graffiti is only dangerous in the mind of three types of people; politicians, advertising executives and graffiti writers.
BANKSY

Graffiti Mind People
Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing.
BANKSY

Art Graffiti Street Tools
Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don’t come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they’re having a piss.
BANKSY

Art Graffiti Smile
It doesn’t take much to be a successful artist-all you need to do is dedicate your entire life to it.
BANKSY

Artist Needs Successful
When he time comes to leave, just walk away quietly and don’t make any fuss.
BANKSY

Away Come Fuss Quietly Walk
People are fond of using military terms to describe what they do. We call it bombing when we go out painting, when of course it’s more like entertaining the troops in a neutral zone, during peacetime in a country without an army.
BANKSY

Army Country Military
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

Cities Names School
I don’t believe in anything. I’m just here for the violence.
BANKSY

Anything Believe Violence
The bad artists imitate, the great artists steal.
BANKSY

Art Artist Great Stealing
Speak softly, but carry a big can of paint.
BANKSY

Graffiti Hipster Speak
We don’t need any more heroes; we just need someone to take out the recycling.
BANKSY

Hero Need Recycling

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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