Top 32 Quotes by Jean-Michel Basquiat

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

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

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

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

I wanted to be a cartoonist when I was young.

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 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.

I start a picture and I finish it.