Jean-Michel Basquiat Quotes
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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.
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The more I paint the more I like everything.
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I thought I was going to be a bum the rest of my life.
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I had very few friends. There was nobody I could trust. I left home when I was fifteen. I lived in Washington Square Park.
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I like kids' work more than work by real artists any day.
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The country makes me more paranoid, you know? I think the crazy people out there are little crazier.
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I'm not a real person. I'm a legend.
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My basic influence had probably been Peter Max.
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I am not a black artist, I am an artist.
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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.
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I don't think about art when I'm working. I try to think about life.
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I start a picture and I finish it.
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Medicine men live in caves.
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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.
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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.
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Occasionally, when I get mad at a woman, I'll do some great, awful painting about her.
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I have done only two portraits: one of the artist Francesco Clemente and another of Andy Warhol.
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I have a painting where somebody's holding a chicken, and underneath the chicken is somebody's head.
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Some days I can't get an idea, and I think, 'Man, I'm just washed up,' but it's just a mood.
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If I'm away from painting for a week, I get bored.