Activists From England

"And it seems to me you lived your life Like a candle in the wind, Never knowing who to cling to When the rain set in. And I would have liked to have known you, But I was just a kid. Your candle burned out long before Your legend ever did."

"And love lies bleeding in my hand. Oh it kills me to think of you with another man. I was playing rock and roll and you were just a fan. But my guitar couldn't hold you, So I split the band. Love lies bleeding in my hands."

"Well Crocodile Rocking is something shocking, When your feet just can't keep still. I never knew me a better time and I guess I never will."

"I remember when rock was young, Me and Suzie had so much fun Holding hands and skimming stones. Had an old gold Chevy and a place of my own. But the biggest kick I ever got Was doing a thing called the Crocodile Rock. While the other kids were Rocking Round the Clock, We were hopping and bopping to the Crocodile Rock."

"Have mercy on the criminal Who is running from the law. Are you blind to the winds of change? Don't you hear him any more?"

"It's a natural achievement, Conquering my homework With her image pounding in my brain. She's an inspiration For my graduation, And she helps to keep the classroom sane."

"Daniel my brother you are older than me. Do you still feel the pain of the scars that won't heal? Your eyes have died but you see more than I. Daniel you're a star in the face of the sky."

"Daniel is travelling tonight on a plane. I can see the red tail lights heading for Spain. Oh and I can see Daniel waving goodbye. God it looks like Daniel, must be the clouds in my eyes."

"While Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters, Sons of bankers, sons of lawyers Turn around and say good morning to the night. For unless they see the sky, But they can't and that is why They know not if it's dark outside or light."

"And I think it's gonna be a long long time Till touch down brings me round again to find I'm not the man they think I am at home. Oh no no no I'm a rocket man."

"Yeah I'm gonna kill myself, Get a little headline news. I'd like to see what the papers say On the state of teenage blues."

"They said get back honky cat, Better get back to the woods. Well I quit those days and my redneck ways. And oh the change is gonna do me good.You better get back honky cat, Living in the city ain't where it's at. It's like trying to find gold in a silver mine. It's like trying to drink whiskey from a bottle of wine."

"And he shall be Levon, And he shall be a good man. And he shall be Levon, In tradition with the family plan. And he shall be Levon, And he shall be a good man. He shall be Levon."

"He was born a pauper to a pawn on a Christmas day When the New York Times said God is dead And the war's begun."

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

""When the paintings suddenly started going for, like, really big money it definitely weirded me out, and I kind of went away to the middle of nowhere and I stopped making any more paintings. But the whole time the auction houses were just selling paintings that I’d done years before and sold for not much money. Or paintings that I traded for a haircut or, you know, an ounce of weed and they were going for like 50 grand." (lightly edited)"

"I can't help feeling it was a bit easier when all I had to compete against was a dustbin down an alley rather than, you know, a Gainsborough or something."

"Is graffiti art or vandalism? That word has a lot of negative connotations and it alienates people, so no, I don't like to use the word 'art' at all."

"I mean, they say you die twice. One time when you stop breathing and a second time, a bit later on, when somebody says your name for the last time."

""[I first picked up a spray can] the day someone ram-raided the Halfords round the corner from our house." — Venue magazine (taken from "Home Sweet Home - Banksy's Bristol" by Steve Wright)"

""You could stick all my shit in Tate Modern and have an opening with Tony Blair and Kate Moss on roller blades handing out vol-au-vents and it wouldn't be as exciting as it is when you go out and paint something big where you shouldn't do." — The Guardian, 2003 (taken from "Home Sweet Home - Banksy's Bristol" by Steve Wright)"

""The craft is finding a decent drainpipe to get access to the site as much as it is in the art... Van Gogh used short, stumpy brush strokes to convey his insanity - I use short, thin ledges above mainline train tracks." — Evening Post, 2004 (taken from "Home Sweet Home - Banksy's Bristol" by Steve Wright)"

""I pretty much use sketchbooks to note down great ideas of somebody else I've just had. A good sketchbook means you don't actually need to bother with having a memory yourself. You can get away with a fair bit of substance abuse if you always carry a notepad and a sharp pencil around with you." [from "Street Sketchbook" by Tristan Manco]"

"Some people want to make the world a better place. I just wanna make the world a better-looking place. If you don't like it, you can paint over it!"

""The thing I hate the most about advertising is that it attracts all the bright, creative and ambitious young people, leaving us mainly with the slow and self-obsessed to become our artists.. Modern art is a disaster area. Never in the field of human history has so much been used by so many to say so little." [taken from Adbusters magazine]"

""A lot of people think that scuttling around stenciling images onto buildings in the middle of the night is the action of a sad, frustrated individual who can't get attention or recognition any other way. They might be right, but I've done gallery shows and, if you've been hitting on people with all sorts of images in all sorts of places, they're a real step backwards, painting the streets means becoming an actual part of the city. It's not a spectator sport." — Tristan Manco, Stencil Graffiti"

""Nearly a hundred pictures are featured here. Each and every one of them a pathetic cry for help." — The Guardian"

"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."

"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."

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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?"

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."