Top 32 Quotes by Jean-Michel Basquiat

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 thought I was going to be a bum the rest of my life.

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

I have done only two portraits: one of the artist Francesco Clemente and another of Andy Warhol.

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

The black person is the protagonist in most of my paintings. I realized that I didn't see many paintings with black people in them.

I wanted to build up a name for myself.

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

The more I paint the more I like everything.

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.