“I wanted to highlight the destruction in Gaza by posting photos on my website – but on the internet, people only look at pictures of kittens.”

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.

The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists.. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little.

Bus stops are far more interesting and useful places to have art than in museums.

All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared to learn to draw?

Nobody knows what you feel inside unless you tell them.

If you want to say something and have people listen then you have to wear a mask. If you want to be honest then you have to live a lie.

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.

A lot of mothers will do anything for their children, except let them be themselves.

T.V. has made going to the theatre seem pointless, photography has pretty much killed painting but graffiti has remained gloriously unspoilt by progress.

Although you might have to creep about at night and lie to your mum it’s actually one of the more honest art forms available. There is no elitism or hype, it exhibits on the best walls a town has to offer and nobody is put off by the price of admission.

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.

The art world is the biggest joke going. It’s a rest home for the overprivileged, the pretentious, and the weak. And modern art is a disgrace – never have so many people used so much stuff and taken so long to say so little.

I need someone to protect me from all the measures they take in order to protect me.

When you go to an art gallery you are simply a tourist looking at the trophy cabinet of a few millionaires.

I 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.

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

We are worried that rebels are taking control in many countries, and look at the results now. Are you satisfied as an American ? What are the results ? Nothing. Very bad – nothing good.

To succeed in the world we must look foolish but be wise.

Look at the results of regime change in Iraq. You can’t possibly claim that it was successful.

You can look at everything from pre-Heisman to post-Heisman, and I think that’s why it ranks up at the top, because before then, I didn’t even think I was good enough to be a professional ballplayer.

I can’t believe that I changed so little. I expected to look old and hollow and gray, but I guess it’s only me on the inside that has shriveled and deteriorated.

Some of the greatest survivors have been women. Look at the courage so many women have shown after surviving earthquakes in the rubble for days on end.

The writer works on the inside and the critic works on the outside. I don’t know what it looks like on the outside, sometimes. It’s not that I’m not interested-it’s not where I live. I live inside the story.

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.