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.
BANKSYGraffiti 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.
More Banksy Quotes
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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.
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I need someone to protect me from all the measures they take in order to protect me.
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I just wanna make the world a better-looking place. If you don’t like it, you can paint over it!
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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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It’s a very frustrated feeling you get when the only people with good photos of you work are the police department.
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I’ve learnt from experience that a painting isn’t finished when you put down your brush – that’s when it starts. The public reaction is what supplies meaning and value. Art comes alive in the arguments you have about it.
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People either love me or they hate me, or they don’t really care.
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Graffiti is only dangerous in the mind of three types of people; politicians, advertising executives and graffiti writers.
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I used to encourage everyone I knew to make art; I don’t do that so much anymore.
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I don’t know why people are so keen to put the details of their private life in public; they forget that invisibility is a superpower.
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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.
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Nobody ever listened to me until they didn’t know who I was
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Stencils are good for two reasons; one – they’re quick; two – they annoy idiots.
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One Original Thought is worth 1000 Meaningless Quotes.
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My lawyer’s opinion is that the cops might not actually be able to charge me with criminal damage any more – because theoretically my graffiti actually increases the value of property rather than decreasing it. That’s his theory, but then my lawyer also believes wearing novelty cartoon ties is a good look.
BANKSY