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.
BILLY CHILDISHI gave up drinking lots of whiskey and began to practice yoga and meditation. As a result I am not dead.
More Billy Childish Quotes
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I’ve dubbed myself as an amateur, not because I work in different field, but because I do what I do for love.
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We believe in a society in delusion, and if you’re awake and not deluded people tell you you’re mad. That’s why I’m a freak and they’re not. But I’m actually not.
BILLY CHILDISH -
I liked drawing and painting, because the only failure would be to listen to the doubters who wanted me to stop drawing and painting because ‘you aren’t going to make a living doing that.’ I liked looking in art books at the work of painters.
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I don’t spend a lot of time working if I can help it.
BILLY CHILDISH -
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.
BILLY CHILDISH -
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.
BILLY CHILDISH -
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.
BILLY CHILDISH -
It is an artist’s duty to be on the wrong end of the see-saw.
BILLY CHILDISH -
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.
BILLY CHILDISH -
One of my biggest problems in life has been my inability to lie.
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We 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.
BILLY CHILDISH -
I loved moustaches. I used to draw myself with one. When I was 14, I was really into war and Van Gogh.
BILLY CHILDISH -
I think that the mythology of Van Gogh’s life, and the beauty of his paintings, is unstoppable.
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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.
BILLY CHILDISH -
Being a fan of authentic Dada, I find today’s art – what I call ‘Bankers’ Dada’ – mind-numbingly dull.
BILLY CHILDISH