Banksy Quotes

The best art is on the street.

Graffiti doesn't exist unless someone got a photo, because it's gone immediately.

I never want to turn something down because I'm afraid to do it, because of some idea of image or whatever. That was never anything I set out to do. In fact, the opposite, I always want to confuse people in terms of any kind of image and be unpredictable in any kind of movie I make.

There was always that thing with 'Johnny' - I always saw myself as his writer and PR. But when he got out there, I had no control. His whole thing was going off on those flights of fancy. Going, 'Let's see what we can possibly do that hasn't been done before up here.' And when it works, it's lovely; it's a great night.

If it is something that I want to do, then I don't think the audience will hate it. Unless I turn into a megalomaniac and start thinking that Salman Khan can do anything.

The city's the best gallery I could imagine. I would never have to make a book and then present it to a gallery and let them decide if my work was nice enough to show it to people. I would control it directly with the public in the streets.

I think there's something really freeing about improv, that it's a collective, creative, in-the-moment piece. That's really exciting and really frustrating, because it's there and gone.

The street is a room by agreement.

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

When you walk down the street and see something in a crazy spot, there's something powerful about that. The street will always be an important part of getting art out there for me.

It takes some courage to write fiction about politically controversial topics. The dread is you'll be labeled a political writer.

In my mind, everything is too sanitised on television - what is wrong with things going wrong?

I suppose illustration tends to live in the streets, rather than in the hermetically sealed atmosphere of the museum, and consequently it has come to be taken less seriously.

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

I've been lucky to have opportunities with David Lynch in 'Lost Highway' and Jennifer Lynch in this movie 'Surveillance,' so I've always boomeranged around a little bit, and no one has caught my foot in the trap yet, but I think if I move fast enough... 'cos I think I got trapped a couple of times.

The studios are nervous on every movie. It never ends, because Marty's movies are so unusual. He doesn't repeat himself, so they don't know what to expect. We have to fight hard to keep them from being ruined. Film students can't believe that when I tell them, because they think, 'Well, it's Martin Scorsese.'

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

For me, it's mostly about having stuff on the street. You're walking down the street, you do it every day, and suddenly there's something that wasn't there yesterday: something bright and cheerful and different. It might stay there for a year; maybe it will disappear.

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

One of the interesting things about skateboarding and graffiti is that skateboarding exists in the documentation of an act.

But I never want to get to the point where I write a safe song or one that represents my sense of a subject in order to appear civilized.

That's immediately how I gauge how healthy a city is-by the amount of tags. It's just in direct competition with advertising. It's still one of the last things that hasn't been corrupted.

The shops in High Street still have their metal grilles down, blank-eyed and sleeping. My name is scrawled across them all. I'm outside Ajay's newsagent's. I'm on the expensive shutters of the health food store. I'm massive on Handie's furniture shop, King's Chicken Joint and the Barbecue Cafe. I thread the pavement outside the bank and all the way to Mothercare. I've possessed the road and am a glistening circle at the roundabout.

Public art is ephemeral by nature. Google 's new project not only catalogs an artist's work but archives it and allows people to see the art long after it has disappeared.

Artistic inspiration ignores the law of supply and demand.