Quotes & Sayings About Graffiti

My mom is a painter, so I've been doing drawings and paintings as early as I can remember. Then there was this gap where I was doing graffiti in high school and making as much [traditional] art. — Alec Monopoly

After pop art, graffiti is probably the biggest art movement in recent history to have such an impact on culture. — Jeffrey Deitch

People still judge a book by its cover, Avery. And your story? It's beautiful. You're beautiful. But I'm nothing but a ripped out page, graffiti where some should never be. Don't taint your story with me. — J.M. Darhower

I don't think you should have to pay to look at graffiti. You should only pay if you want to get rid of it, — Banksy

There is a bus station in Henry, but it isn't on Main Street. It's one block north - the town fathers hadn't wanted all the additional traffic. The station lost one-third of its roof to a tornado fifteen years ago. In the same summer, a bottle rocket brought the gift of fire to its restrooms. The damage has never been repaired, but the town council makes sure that the building is painted fresh every other year, and always the color of a swimming pool. There is never graffiti. Vandals would have to drive more than twenty miles to buy the spray paint.

Every once in a long while, a bus creeps into town and eases to a stop beside the mostly roofed, bright aqua station with the charred bathrooms. Henry is always glad to see a bus. Such treats are rare. — N.D. Wilson

All the work I did was to challenge politics, culture, and women's rights. I felt like I really wanted to break out. That's why I wanted to use graffiti. It's more open. I don't need people to come to an exhibition. Graffiti gives a voice to the walls. — Malina Suliman

Graffiti is a lot easier than the canvas actually, because it's such a large format, so when you're going to such a thin detail, it's not that thin in the realm of things because it's such a big wall. This would take a small paint brush of detail, but on a huge wall, if that's the size of a building, the thinnest detail is still that big, it's a quick spray. Spray paint is easiest for me. I love spray paint. — Alec Monopoly

I walk down the center of the street in our old neighborhood. I recognize the cracked building with the graffiti of an angel that has the words 'Who will guard against the guardians? — Susan Ee

For me, graffiti means making marks on surfaces using just about anything, be it markers, spray, paint, chalk, lipstick, varnish, ink. Or it can be the result of scratches and incisions. The aim is to maintain the energy created by disturbance or excitement in the street. — Barry McGee

Jean was black and had to present himself as separate from graffiti somehow. Keith was gay and white and could glamorize graffiti in a way that Jean could not. Jean and Keith both understood this. — Jennifer Clement

Aristotelian logic is massive and marmoreal, but every monument accumulates graffiti. — David Berlinski

Across from the famous jewelry store on Fifth Avenue at Fifty-Seventh Street, we sat in the back of a graffiti-covered white box truck watching the world go by on the surveillance vehicle's hidden high-def camera. So far there had been no sign of the thieves. Or even Audrey Hepburn. — James Patterson

I used to breakdance, be a b-boy. I love hip-hop from back in the graffiti days, growing up listening to Michael Jackson. Loved it from birth. I know it all, from Afrika Bambaataa, the roots and the beginning. I came up in a good era. — DJ Khaled

Graffiti, citizens, is the name for the way capitalists deface their public buildings. — Adam Johnson

The confessional writer will treat her story like a wailing wall. She kneels, and her story spills out, messy, improper. It isn't a protest or even graffiti, but her story is an offering of things that she overlooked or notices that others have overlooked. She is in danger of exposure but she remembers when she lived in hiding and that was worse. She cannot turn back now because this is how life has spun out of her, part vexing passage and part prayer. — Patricia Hickman

True to a unique tradition of Rome, all the nearby walls had been slathered with that unique institution of the Latin race: graffiti. Daubed in paint of every color were slogans such as Death to the aristocrats! and The shade of Tribune Ateius calls out for blood! and May the curse of Ateius fall on Crassus and all his friends! All of this was scrawled wretchedly and spelled worse. Rome has an extremely high rate of literacy, mostly so that the citizens can practice this particular art form. — John Maddox Roberts

[Smiley contemplates graffiti:]'Punk is destructive. Society does not need it.' The assertion caused him a moment's indecision. 'Oh, but society does,' he wanted to reply; 'society is an association of minorities. — John Le Carre

The most intriguing candidate for that "something else" is called the Broken Windows theory. Broken Windows was the brainchild of the criminologist James Q. Wilson and George Kelling. Wilson and Kelling argued that crime is the inevitable result of disorder. If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes. In a city, relatively minor problems like graffiti, public disorder, and aggressive panhandling, they write, are all the equivalent of broken windows, invitations to more serious crimes: — Malcolm Gladwell

The city fought a $300 million, 18-year war on graffiti. New York Mayor John Lindsay declared war in 1972, and the battle for the transit system came later. — Adam Mansbach

His face is more open than an open book, like a wall of graffiti really. I realize I'm writing wow on my thigh with my finger, decide I better open my mouth and snap us out of this impromptu staring contest. — Jandy Nelson

Some people are enraged, and some people are applauding. If there were a mission statement for graffiti, that would be it. — Barry McGee

I got into DJing and making beats when I was about 17. I was always fascinated by the four elements of hip-hop: you know, writing, rhyming, breakdancing and graffiti. — Abbie Cornish

Even your graffiti artists spray Rumi on the walls — Khaled Hosseini

The trains were the beating heart of the New York graffiti scene. — Adam Mansbach

Some people become cops because they want to make the world a better place. Some people become vandals because they want to make the world a better looking place. — Banksy

I wasn't trying to turn graffiti into an art form. I just wanted to learn about art. I wanted to learn this game. — Barry McGee

I know about hip-hop culture, whether it's graffiti writing or DJ-ing or being an MC. — Josh Peck

The violent illiteracies of the graffiti, the clenched silence of the adolescent, the nonsense cries from the stage-happening, are resolutely strategic. The insurgent and the freak-out have broken off discourse with a cultural system which they despise as a cruel, antiquated fraud. They will not bandy words with it. Accept, even momentarily, the conventions of literate linguistic exchange, and you are caught in the net of the old values, of the grammars that can condescend or enslave. — George Steiner

Well, while you were in the bathroom, I sat down at this picnic table here in Bumblefug, Kentucky, and noticed that someone had carved that GOD HATES FAG, which, aside from being a grammatical nightmare, is absolutely ridiculous. So I'm changing it to 'God Hates Baguettes.' It's tough to disagree with that. Everybody hates baguettes. — John Green

Speak softly, but carry a big can of paint. — Banksy

Though Kurt would later claim that his graffiti messages were political, in fact, most of what he wrote was nonsensical. He enraged a neighbor with a boat by painting "Boat Ack" in red letters on the ship's hull; on the other side he lettered, "Boat people go home. — Charles R. Cross

This book blew me away. Kelly Parra writes with the keen eye of an artist. Graffiti Girl is warm, gutsy, and true-to-life - an unflinching, honest portrayal of young adults. A seamless and impressive debut. — Anne Frasier

'American Graffiti' was unpleasant because of the fact that there was no money, no time, and I was compromising myself to death. — George Lucas

I guess if I was made responsible for every single line of dialogue in a game and every single piece of textual visual detail, every sign or piece of graffiti, then yes, I think that would be comparable to the time and effort required to write a very long novel, indeed. — Richard K. Morgan

If you disagree with something, it's easier to say 'you suck' than to figure out and explain exactly what you disagree with. You're also safe that way from refutation. In this respect trolling is a lot like graffiti. Graffiti happens at the intersection of ambition and incompetence: people want to make their mark on the world, but have no other way to do it than literally making a mark on the world. — Paul Graham

He hurried back. Walls seemed to shift and advance. Right here, it must be. Wasn't this passage too short? No, it wasn't a wall that blocked his way, only fog. The fog retreated before him - then at once yielded up a wall. Staggering crimson letters caught in the web of graffiti spelled KILLER. — Ramsey Campbell

My lawyer's opinion is that the cops might not actually be able to charge me with criminal damage any more - because theoretically my graffiti actually increases the value of property rather than decreasing it. That's his theory, but then my lawyer also believes wearing novelty cartoon ties is a good look. — Banksy

Did you even realize who was at that table?" The one with long, dark, wavy hair laughs. "I mean, let's just for a minute acknowledge that you just sang to two of the members from Corrosive Velocity and Jackson Shaw! Like, from The Forgotten, Jackson Shaw."
"Sid, keep it down." The other hisses so low, I'm almost unable to hear her.
Realizing this is my snake charmer, I slip into autopilot with the gathering fans: nod, smile, and sign.
"You've got to be more excited. I mean, the man is seven feet of lickable body graffiti. Whew! I'd climb his beanstalk any day. — Sadie Grubor

Block of Death. Just inside the door on the left is the room where they held the proceedings. Jarek remarks that the SS officer who sentenced five thousand Poles here to die was still alive last year, living in Germany, age ninety-two. We ask why. He shrugs. At the far end on the corridor, on the left, looking out into the courtyard, is the room where the condemned were stripped and held. An illustration depicts a naked girl holding on to her mother's legs as the SS guard comes for them. High on the wall, a prisoner scratched graffiti, a name and the date and the words, "Sentenced to die." Beneath that is the date of the next day and the words, "I'm still here. — Christopher Buckley

I had no friends. Was I happy? I was wildly happy. Sitting on my bed, which took up most of the space in that narrow room, I whispered prayers of thanks that I was really and truly here in New York, beginning another life. I worshipped the place. I feasted on every beautiful inch of it - the crowds, the fruit and vegetable stands, the miles of pavement, the graffiti, even the garbage. All of it sent me into paroxysms of joy. Needless to say, my elevation had an irrational cast to it. Had I not arrived laden with ideas of urban paradise, I might have felt bad losing sleep, might have felt lonely and disoriented, but instead I walked around town like a love-struck idiot, inhaling the difference between there and here. — Siri Hustvedt

Ig had not been inside for years, but it was much as he remembered it. The foundry lay open to the sky, brick arches and pillars rising away into the slanting reddish light. Thirty years of overlapping graffiti covered the walls. The individual messages were mostly incoherent, but then perhaps the individual messages were of no importance. It seemed to Ig that all such messages were the same at heart: I Am; I Was; I Want To Be. — Joe Hill

Walls tagged with graffiti (one such piece of tagging: a stencil of a familiar Sith Lord's helmet with the phrase beneath it reading VADER LIVES). — Chuck Wendig

Wherever you are, at any moment, try and find something beautiful. A face, a line out of a poem, the clouds out of a window, some graffiti, a wind farm. Beauty cleans the mind. — Matt Haig

A digital sound sample in angry rap doesn't correspond to the graffiti but the wall. — Jaron Lanier

The walls were covered with graffiti and William passed the time correcting the spelling — Terry Pratchett

Everybody's trying to leave their mark on the world. That's why there's graffiti and babies. — Kristen Schaal

Hip-hop is a competition culture. It's based around, "My DJ is better than you. My graffiti artist is better than you." — Ice-T

The walls of her stall were covered with graffiti. If it had been funny ("Pull here for MFA Degree" right below the toilet paper dispenser) she would've stayed longer, but it was mostly weird random names and dates. — Grady Hendrix

The mistake that was made in the '70s is we stopped policing the streets, we stopped cleaning the streets, we stopped cleaning the graffiti off buildings, we stopped supporting our cultural institutions and building parks and schools and all those kinds of things. — Michael Bloomberg

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? — Banksy

I have always been a Peter Blake fan and love street art and graffiti. I really like this street-art collective called Faile. They're from Brooklyn and make these prints of beautiful women. — Eliza Doolittle

The cream-tiled walls were spattered here and there with old dried bloodstains, deep gouges that might have been clawmarks, and all kinds of graffiti. As usual, someone had spelt Cthulhu wrongly. — Simon R. Green

For me, graffiti and the complexities with which it is either absorbed or expelled from what is going on, is a really good comparison to the way I see my work being similarly expelled or absorbed into different types of discourse. — Richard Phillips

An "attack on SeaWorld" might mean a bomb, or it might mean graffiti and glitter and a cream pie in the face. The government doesn't always seem to distinguish between the two. — Karen Joy Fowler

Imagine a city where graffiti wasn't illegal, a city where everybody could draw whatever 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 party where everyone was invited, not just the estate agents and barons of big business. Imagine a city like that and stop leaning against the wall - it's wet. — Banksy

Let's not forget: This all began when you had eight- and nine-year-old children writing graffiti on walls. Their parents were told: "You will never see them again. If you want to have children, go to your wife and make new ones." [Bashar] Assad's people rebelled. He crushed them brutally. But his military could not protect him. So he asked the Iranians to come in and help. — Adel Al-Jubeir

There's never any graffiti in the hotel. Although in the Gents a couple of weeks ago I did see someone had drawn a lady's part. Quite detailed. The guy obviously had talent. — Steve Coogan

In the summer of 1988, my father took me up to look at the remains of our home, the dream house that he'd built. It was my first time since our family left four years earlier. Political and obscene graffiti covered the half-torn walls. There was no ceiling and surprisingly no floor: the parquet, the stone, the marble, all looted. — Rabih Alameddine

Rhyme written in graffiti xeroxed on blueprints, students influenced are now a nuisance. — Louis Eric Barrier

Should graffiti be judged on the same level as modern art? Of course not: It's way more important than that. — Banksy

Street culture is punk, hip-hop, skateboarding, surfing, graffiti. It's like a massive global culture that is all tied together. But for so many years it was very geographic. — Jeffrey Deitch

I'm a painter. I was a graffiti artist, and I painted all over the world. — Olivier Megaton

There is a tradition that sees journalism as the dark side of literature, with book writing at its zenith. I don't agree. I think that all written work constitutes literature, even graffiti. — Eduardo Galeano

He refuses to sell his paintings and writes "NOT FOR SALE" on some of them. He is furious because people are writing about his ghetto childhood and call him a "graffiti artist" and "primitive." "They don't invent a childhood for white artists," he says. — Jennifer Clement

Lips are the outward sign, the emblem of desire, and lipstick is the ink in which we graffiti that message on our smile, our pout and pucker. When a girl blows a man a kiss she is sending him a piece of her soul. — Chloe Thurlow

I wanna spray this fucking wall with cum graffiti. — Kendall Grey

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. — Banksy

Do not try to be pretty. You were not meant to be pretty; you were meant to burn down the earth and graffiti the sky. Don't let anyone ever simplify you to just 'pretty'. — Anonymous

As fussy as they were about cleanliness and order, the Swiss seemed to Anna to be rather lax about graffiti. — Jill Alexander Essbaum

a piece of graffiti scrawled on a Brazilian train read: "Those who petition for divorce use the ink of their children's tears". — Anonymous

I'm a melting pot of frienship. — Ghost

Everything is still out there: the rooftops and chimneys, the graffiti, the office towers and the cyclists; soon there will be sheep and that immense sky the keep out in the countryside ... Once I thought there were two realities, inner and outer, but perhaps that's a bit meagre; I'm not quite the same person I was last night ... — Audrey Niffenegger

Skateboarding, like graffiti, will never be tamed. No matter how much they monetize it, no matter how big it gets, no matter how many companies are putting millions and millions of dollars into marketing it, it's always going to be some Mexican kid on a corner in Echo Park that changes the rules of the game. — Jeffrey Deitch

I've heard my work called 'bold' and 'graffiti-like,' but for me it is always instinctual. I start with a shape or a colour and go from there. — Paloma Picasso

There was a great jagged hole where they had ripped out the fireplace; the wall around it was crowded with faded graffiti explain who loved who, who was gay and who should fuck off. — Tana French

Look at the blogosphere - the biggest lavatory wall in the universe, a palimpsest of graffiti and execration. — A.C. Grayling

My graffiti really comes more from a May '68, sort of Situationist vibe than the hip-hop world. I think a real graffiti artist would find me a poser. — Mike Mills

I think graffiti is part of Berlin culture. You think about what the Berlin wall meant and how visible that was in everyone's life. How it was a part of their very identity. — Ian Bremmer

This goes out to freedom fighters, graffiti writers, innocent lifers, grassroots organizers — Talib Kweli

graffiti in the stall read: CALL DANA FOR BLOW. Colin wondered whether Dana provided fellatio or cocaine, — John Green

And I look at him because he needs to be looked at. He needs to be seen. I hate that he has been on his own for so long painting graffiti moons in the dark keeping quiet about who he really is. — Cath Crowley

Non illegitimi te carborundum, the graffiti in prisoner-of-war camps is said to have run. The rough translation, very important for artists, is "Don't let the bastards get you down." Artists who take this to heart survive and often prevail. The key here is action. Pain that is not used profitably quickly solidifies into a leaden heart, which makes any action difficult. — Julia Cameron

The people who run our cities dont understand graffiti because they think nothing has the right to exist unless it makes a profit ...
the people who truly deface our neighborhoods are the companies that scrawl giant slogans across buildings and buses trying to make us feel inadequate unless we buy their stuff ...
any advertisement in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours, it belongs to you ,, its yours to take, rearrange and re use.Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.. — Banksy

But there's no way round it-commercial success is a mark of failure for a graffiti artist. We're not supposed to be embraced in that way. When you look at how society rewards so many of the wrong people, it's hard not to view financial reimbursement as a badge of self-serving mediocrity. — Banksy

Stories had a way of doing that, in Grillo's experience. It was his belief that nothing, but nothing, could stay secret, however powerful the forces with interests vested in silence. Conspirators might conspire and thugs attempt to gag but the truth, or an approximation of same, would show itself sooner or later, very often in the unlikeliest form. It was seldom hard facts that revealed the life behind the life. It was rumour, graffiti, strip cartoons and love songs. — Clive Barker

The prevalence of social ugliness made commitment to physical beauty all the more essential. And the very presence in life of double-wide mobile homes, Magic Marker graffiti, and orange shag carpeting had the effect of making ills such as poverty, crime, repression, pollution and child abuse seem tolerable. In a sense, beauty was the ultimate protest, and, in that it generally lasted longer than an orgasm, the ultimate refuge. The Venus de Milo screamed "No!" at evil, whereas the Spandex stretch pant, the macrame plant holder were compliant with it. — Tom Robbins

Comment sections on the internet is like gang graffiti, abusive words sprayed like nonsense and it's ugly to look at. — Michael P. Naughton

Ludwig's enormous, awe-inspiring genius, his productivity, his prescient modernism were all contained in music. Beside that, the letters to the Immortal Beloved looked no more impressive to her than bathroom stall graffiti: L.V.B. luvs his I.B. Wishes she wuz here. — Magnus Flyte

T.V. has made going to the theatre seem pointless, photography has pretty much killed painting but graffiti has remained gloriously unspoilt by progress. — Banksy

One piece of graffiti doesn't mean much. Forty pieces of graffiti might mean something ... It's all about connecting the dots. — Kim Rossmo

Now everybody's bloggin'. I heard somebody say, "Blogging is just graffiti with punctuation." Everyone's an authority so there's nobody in power, 'cause everyone thinks they're in power. — Ice-T

People say graffiti is ugly, irresponsible and childish ... but that's only if it's done properly. — Banksy

Love and romance are things worth waiting for. — Cath Crowley

I had just been doing graffiti around New York and this real estate investor guy had walked through meat packing in New York and saw some of my graffiti. He was impressed and asked if I sold canvases. I really had not made any canvases of my graffiti work yet, but told him I could make one for him. He then commissioned me to make ten paintings and put on my first art show. Between the sold out show and the cops chasing after me it created a lot of media and I've been doing really well since then. — Alec Monopoly

Traditional graffiti writers have a bunch of rules they like to stick to, and good luck to them, but I didn't become a graffiti artist so I could have somebody else tell me what to do. If you're the type who gets sentimental about people scribbling over your stuff, I suggest graffiti is probably not the right hobby for you. — Banksy

graffiti on a Creggan wall would have answered her: "I knew Raymond Gilmour. Thank fuck he didn't know me. — Raymond Gilmour

Where do babies come from? Don't bother asking adults. They lie like pigs. However, diligent independent research and hours of playground consultation have yielded fruitful, if tentative, results. There are several theories. Near as we can figure out, it has something to do with acting ridiculous in the dark. We believe it is similar to dogs when they act peculiar and ride each other. This is called "making love". Careful study of popular song lyrics, advertising catch-lines, TV sitcoms, movies, and T-Shirt inscriptions offers us significant clues as to its nature. Apparently it makes grown-ups insipid and insane. Some graffiti was once observed that said "sex is good". All available evidence, however, points to the contrary. — Matt Groening

His achievements read like the graffiti on the walls of a hangman's changing room. — Jonathan Larson

Why didn't vandals ever quote Shakespeare? I'd love to see graffiti in iambic pentameter. — J.A. Konrath