Cy Twombly Quotes

Street art, of course, is political, because it's illegal, so the very act of doing it is an act of defiance.

My work isn't overtly political, although it is sometimes painted in places where I don't have permission to paint, so that could be construed as a political statement.

Some people are enraged, and some people are applauding. If there were a mission statement for graffiti, that would be it.

Graffiti's always been a temporary art form. You make your mark and then they scrub it off.

Should graffiti be judged on the same level as modern art? Of course not: It's way more important than that.

Bus stops are far more interesting and useful places to have art than in museums. Graffiti has more chance of meaning something or changing stuff than anything indoors. Graffiti has been used to start revolutions, stop wars, and generally is the voice of people who aren't listened to. Graffiti is one of those 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 somebody smile while they're having a piss.

Graffiti is linear, and it's done with a pencil, and it's like writing on walls.

Rumours of me being Banksy are greatly exaggerated. We are all Banksy.

The whole world is covered in graffiti. No one cares. It's just part of urban noise.

Jamming a coin into a monopoly newspaper box or liberating a billboard in the middle of the night can be a rather honest and joyful thing to do.

My drawings and paintings were done as an act of protest; I was trying by means of my work to convince the world that it is ugly, sick and hypocritical.

Is graffiti art or vandalism? That word has a lot of negative connotations and it alienates people, so no, I don't like to use the word 'art' at all.

Our records, if you have a dark sense of humor, were funny, but our records weren't about comedy. They were about protests, fantasy, confrontation and all that.

My work is my way of expressing myself without being arrested.

That's the test of street art - to see if anybody stopped. People would cross out ones they didn't like and would star others. I liked that people would engage with them.

The best art is on the street.

I think at some point there may be artists who will get fed up, and they deliberately want to use their art as a means to rock the waves a little bit. And instead of doing the status quo, they'll deliberately go out to really make a change. I think Kendrick Lamar is an example of that.

Spraypainting a shop shutter turns an ugly, boring thing into something interesting and colourful. I think you'd have to be a pretty negative person to find fault in it.

I've been interested in hip-hop since it first appeared: the fact that it was born not in the music industry but on the street, the idea of using a turntable as an instrument, singing vividly about reality instead of typical love songs, and its links to graffiti and dance.

Pirate radio is like street art.

When I first got into graffiti I thought it was going to change the world. But when, 20-years-later, it still hadn't, I got bored of the self-imposed rules.

What Public Enemy and Underground Resistance had in common was a rejection of the idea of music as entertainment.

Banksy's a very selfish, driven, paranoid artist. For good reasons.

When things socially and politically get difficult, punk music suddenly comes back again, and there's just a really healthy pivot away from music that's not humanly understandable.

The bravest artists I've ever known have always been graf artists. Risking your life and your freedom is no joke.