Banksy

"There's a famous story about a hobo who hitch-hiked the freight trains across the Australian outback many years ago. He marked his trips by writing the word 'Eternity' everywhere he could in elaborate chalk handwriting. He wrote on so many train cars, bridges and pavements that all across Australia he became part of urban folklore. In 1999 Sydney led the world celebrations for the arrival of a new millennium, and as the eyes of the world watch a spectacular firework display lit up the harbour, at its very center, spanning the length of its famous bridge was the word 'Eternity', spelt out in that same elaborate script by a thousand tiny lights. Fucking sell out." [lightly edited for grammar]"

"It's going to take one very special lady, or a whole load of average ones, to get over you."

"I think I was trying to make a statement about the endless recycling of an icon by endlessly recycling an icon."

"People seem to think that if they dress like a revolutionary, they don't actually have to behave like one."

"Why would someone just paint pictures of a revolutionary when you could actually behave like one instead?"

"Some mothers will do anything for their children, except let them be themselves."

"Recipe idea: take on fire extinguisher and pour out all the contents. Mix down a nice bright emulsion paint to the consistency of full fat milk, stirring constantly to remove any lumps. Pour into the extinguisher, screw on cap tightly and write on things up to 50 feet high. Re-use by swapping over the CO2 charged canister (costs about one pound). The perfect accompaniment to a night out drinking heavily with friends."

"An illegal monument to the British talent for binge drinking and vandalising public property."

"Oh my god, that's so cute the way you just draw on stuff and think about yourself all the time."

"Nobody ever listened to me and I used to think that was their fault. Eventually I got to realise maybe it was the fact I was boring and paranoid that was the problem. But you find that people who know you rarely listen to a word you say, even though they'll happily take as gospel the word of a man they've never met if it's on a record or in a book. If you want to say something and have people listen then you have to wear a mask. If you want to be honest then you have to live a lie."

"Being yourself is overrated anyway. It doesn't help. People say 'I'm just being myself' as if that's some kind of fucking achievement. That's not an achievement, that's not honesty, it's just a lack of imagination and cowardice."

"Last year there was a story on the news that went 'A man arrested in Central London today was found to be carrying over a hundred British passports, twenty birth certificates and more than three hundred driving licenses. Police say they have not yet been able to identify the man...'"

"There are four basic human needs: food, sleep, sex and revenge."

"All artists are willing to suffer for their work. But why are so few prepared to learn to draw?"

"Painting something that defies the law of the land is good. Painting something that defies the law of the land and defies the law of gravity at the same time is really good."

"On my first day of work as a pork butcher the boss showed me a side of meat and said 'just treat the animal like you treat the ladies.' He then hacked off part of the rib cage with a swing of his cleaver, threw it in a polystyrene tray, pulled some cellophane tightly around it, bounced it off his knee and threw it over his shoulder into a bucket. It turned out he hadn't had a girlfriend for over two years."

"I was concerned the piece was a bit too much like a legitimate sign and told my mate I thought it went over people's heads. 'It's not that it goes over people's heads,' he said, 'it's just that they all fucking ducked.'"

"There's nothing more dangerous than someone who wants to make the world a better place."

"Policemen and security guards wear hats with a peak that comes down low over their eyes. Apparently this is a psychological technique, because eyebrows are very expressive, they let you down if you're lying or trying to bully somebody. You have far more authority if you keep them covered up. The advantage of this is that if makes it difficult for your average cop to see anything more than six foot off the ground. Which is why painting rooftops and bridges is so easy."

"On Tuesday I went around San Francisco dressed in overalls designating large parts of it as legal graffiti areas."

"Dissent pays the rent."

"As far as I can tell, the only thing worth looking at in most museums of art is all the schoolgirls on day trips with the art department."

"This is not a photo opportunity."

"Twisted little people go out every day and deface this great little city. Leaving their idiotic little scribblings, invading communities and making people feel dirty and used. They just take, take, take and they don't put anything back. They're mean and selfish and they make the world an ugly place to be. We call them advertising agencies and town planners."

"They say there is a graffiti problem. The only problem with graffiti is that there isn't enough of it."

"Imagine a city where graffiti wasn't illegal, a city where everybody could draw wherever they liked. Where every street was awash with a million colours and little phrases. Where standing at a bus stop was never boring. A city that felt like a living breathing thing which belonged to everybody, not just the estate agents and barons of big business. Imagine a city like this and stop leaning against that wall - it's wet."

""Superficially his work looks deep, but it's actually deeply superficial." [Evening Standard]"

"Bus stops are far more interesting and useful places to have art than in museums. Graffiti has more chance of meaning something or changing stuff than anything indoors. Graffiti has been used to start revolutions, stop wars, and generally is the voice of people who aren't listened to. Graffiti is one of those few tools you have if you have almost nothing. And even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make somebody smile while they're having a piss."

"Only when the last tree has been cut down and the last river has dried up will man realize that reciting red Indian proverbs makes you sound like a fucking Muppet."

"A wall is a very big weapon. It's one of the nastiest things you can hit someone with."

"My main problem with cops is that they do what they're told. They say 'Sorry mate, I'm just doing my job' all the fucking time. And every time someone says 'if it was down to me it would be ok, but I'm following orders' a little bit inside of you dies. If you say it as often as cops do, then there isn't much left."

"People are fond of using military terms to describe what they do. We call it bombing when we go out painting, when of course it's more like entertaining the troops in a neutral zone, during peacetime in a country without an army. Why all the bombs? Because it's healthy to think about bombs all the time, because it's difficult to get your head around the fact that humans have the hardware available to make their entire species extinct. Nobody talks about it anymore but they say this is why we've all become so into money, because at the back of all our minds we all know that the atomic bombs have taken our future away from us."

"Getting paranoid is an occupational hazard of illicit street painting, which is good. Your mind is working at its best when you're being paranoid. You explore every avenue and possibility of your situation at high speed with total clarity. I'm not interested in looking at things made by people who aren't paranoid, they're not working to their full capacity."

"Graffiti ultimately wins out over proper art because it becomes part of your city, it's a tool; 'I'll meet you in that pub, you know, the one opposite that wall with a picture of a monkey holding a chainsaw'. I mean, how much more useful can a painting be than that?"

"You could say that graffiti is ugly, selfish and that it's just the action of people who want some pathetic kind of fame. But if that's true it's only because graffiti writers are just like everyone else in this fucking country."

"Writing graffiti is about the most honest way you can be an artist. It takes no money to do it, you don't need an education to understand it and there's no admission fee."

"They say big brother is watching you. But maybe big brother is watching dutch girly videos on the next screen along."

"There are no exceptions to the rule that everyone thinks they are an exception to the rules."

"I like ironies unless they're real. I was arrested for painting a picture about corruption over a billboard. As a result I spent 40 hours in a cell with the cops taking the piss and telling me lies, followed by a spell of community service and a hefty fine for which I never got a receipt and no record appeared to be kept."

"I think I was lucky to learn so young that there's no such thing as justice and there's nothing you can do about it. The more useful lesson I learnt was that there's no point in behaving yourself. You will probably be punished for something you never did anyway. People get it wrong all the time."

"They say that if you gave monkeys a thousand typewriters at some point you'd have yourself a novel. I was wondering if you gave a thousand monkeys a thousand stick of dynamite how long would it take for them to make the city a more beautiful looking place."

"Doing what you're told is generally overrated."

"'Only boys with small dicks paint pictures of big guns' - a girl in the pub overlooking Mono Lisa [holding a rocket launcher], Soho"

"Someone famous once said 'It takes two people to make a piece of art. One person to make the art and another person to stop them from destroying it.' Which is a more poetic than saying: 'It takes two people to make a piece of art. One person to make the art and another person to come round later from the council and sand-blast it off."

"It's great when you love someone so much you can sleep with other people behind their back and it doesn't even matter."

"Every time I hear the word culture I release the safety catch on my 9mm."

"Pace yourself and repeat [graffitiing] as often as you feel inadequate and no-one listens to a word you say."

"Some people think you should have better things to think about than trying to think about better things. But the instinct is still there."

"At least graffiti has a fighting chance of meaning a little more to people. Graffiti has been used to start revolutions, stop wars and generally is the voice of people who aren't listened to. Graffiti is one of the few tools you have if you have almost nothing. and even if you don't come up with a picture to cure world poverty you can make someone smile while they're having a piss."

"Well I'm frustrated by many things but trying to get accepted by the art world isn't one of them. This seems difficult for some people to understand - you do not paint graffiti in the vain hope that one day some big fat tory will discover you and put your pictures on his wall. If you draw on walls in public then you are already operating on a higher level."