Jean-Michel Basquiat Quotes

I think anger and laughter are very close to each other, when you think about it.

I'm free from holding personal anger because I can express what I want through my music.

I think I cry when I'm angry. I let it go that way.

The anger and the creativity are so closely intertwined with me, and there's plenty of anger left.

An angry people cannot create anything that is not imbued with anger.

To write is to give meaning to suffering.

You can make poems out of anger as well as tenderness. You can make poetry out of anything. It can be the ugliest of emotions. It doesn't have to be sweetness and light.

Don't think it, ink it.

All the best parts of art come from pain turned to celebration.

I like all those painters who loved and had a strong feeling for nature.

I see writing and acting as different parts of the same continuum. Writing is better for intense emotion. If you're very angry about something, you shouldn't present it as strongly when you're acting. But if you're really angry and writing about it, that's the best way to get it out and across.

It's still an escape for me, painting, so it also takes me elsewhere. I don't think I would do it otherwise.

I do have that mindset - that most good art comes from some turmoil, from someone trying to come to some equilibrium, or come up and get a breath.

I love writing and directing because it's great therapy. Every project I've done, there's been a personal connection.

I'm a bit of an expert on anger, having suffered from it all through my youth, when I was both brunt and font. It's certainly the most miserable state to be in but it's also tremendously gratifying, really - rage feels justified.

I've always loved singing and the catharsis of it.

Women who are inclined to write poetry at all are inspired by being mad at something.

Painting is an infinitely minute part of my personality.

I want things to be better all the time. And I tend to get angry about that. Books are an opportunity to vent.

I always had a tremendous amount of rage about the business, and I thought turning that into comedy was healthy.

If I didn't have my films as an outlet for all the different sides of me, I would probably be locked up.

For me, painting is a way to forget life. It is a cry in the night, a strangled laugh.

I've never been particularly good at explaining or even understanding what this sort of rage is that is so accessible to me. I'm not an out-of-control person, but I can access in my work very easily a feeling of real fury. Thank goodness I've channeled it into my work, I guess.

A guilty conscience needs to confess. A work of art is a confession.

Instead of going out and shooting people, why don't you go start a band.