Jean-Michel Basquiat

“I don't think about art when I'm working. I try to think about life.”

“I don't listen to what art critics say. I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.”

“I'm not a real person. I'm a legend.”

“For a while, I was drawing on good paper, but now I've gone back to the bad stuff. I put matte medium on it. If you put matte medium on it, it seals up, so it doesn't really matter.”

“I had some money, I made the best paintings ever. I was completely reclusive, worked a lot, took a lot of drugs. I was awful to people.”

“I wanted to be a star, not a gallery mascot.”

“Occasionally, when I get mad at a woman, I'll do some great, awful painting about her.”

“I wanted to be a cartoonist when I was young.”

“I was a really lousy artist as a kid. Too abstract expressionist; or I'd draw a big ram's head, really messy. I'd never win painting contests. I remember losing to a guy who did a perfect Spiderman.”

“I want to make paintings that look as if they were made by a child.”

“Medicine men live in caves.”

“I have a painting where somebody's holding a chicken, and underneath the chicken is somebody's head.”

“Believe it or not, I can actually draw.”

“I am not a black artist, I am an artist.”

“The country makes me more paranoid, you know? I think the crazy people out there are little crazier.”

“I wanted to build up a name for myself.”

“I had very few friends. There was nobody I could trust. I left home when I was fifteen. I lived in Washington Square Park.”

“Since I was seventeen I thought I might be a star. I'd think about all my heroes, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix... I had a romantic feeling about how these people became famous.”

“Charles Saatchi has never liked my work at all.”

“I start a picture and I finish it.”