Billy Childish Quotes

Failure is fantastic, because you meet yourself and get to know your limitations. This is how I express myself, and I can't do it any other way.

Artists who don't paint aren't artists.

I loved moustaches. I used to draw myself with one. When I was 14, I was really into war and Van Gogh.

Remember, a fact is a fact, no matter how hard the liars amongst you might try hushing it up.

My favourite things are jokes, friendliness and feeling comfortable.

We believe in a society in delusion, and if you're awake and not deluded people tell you you're mad. That's why I'm a freak and they're not. But I'm actually not.

I've always liked New York, as I like towns with an edge and New York has a European feel, so when I came to play music here in the '80s it was a surprise to me.

We had the same kind of unemployment here as they had in the worst hit places in the North and you're meant to be on a cushy wicket in the South. If you go up to Newcastle, you can tell that the town's really had money, or Liverpool, you know, the northern towns have got grandeur, whereas Medway, being just a sort of garrison town and dockyard town, you don't have anything like Earl Grey Square or anything like that.

Naturally, I have no heroes: I am my heroes. I am my brothers and sisters. I feel myself joined by the soul with all beauty. My heart sings with every brave endeavour. With the strange wings of impossible butterflies, with every rock that breathes life into the world. I stand shoulder to shoulder with all denouncers of meanness. I honour spirit and faith and uphold the glorious amateur. I'm in love with desperate men with desperate hands, walking in second-hand shoes searching for God and hearing God and hating God. I'm a desperate man, buckled with fear, I am a desperate man who demands to be listened to, who demands to connect. I'm a desperate man who denounces the dullness of money and status. I'm a desperate man who will not bow down to accolade or success. I'm a desperate man who loves the simplicity of painting and hates galleries and white walls and the dealers in art. Who loves unreasonableness and hotheadedness, who loves contradiction, hates publishing houses and also I am Vincent Van Gogh, Hiroshige and every living artist who dares to draw God on this planet.

I was bullied for the best part of my childhood, and still it comes easy to me. I have to have to bite my lip, to quit from apologising for people walking into me, standing on my feet, and letting go of doors in my face.

I'm going to get a pair of wire-snips, and I've also started a new campaign to have blank CDs on jukeboxes so you can play the silence.

I like feeling at home and knowing people. I like talking about ideas and being friendly.

I gave up drinking lots of whiskey and began to practice yoga and meditation. As a result I am not dead.

I liked drawing and painting, because the only failure would be to listen to the doubters who wanted me to stop drawing and painting because 'you aren't going to make a living doing that.' I liked looking in art books at the work of painters.

I don't spend a lot of time working if I can help it.

Being a fan of authentic Dada, I find today's art - what I call 'Bankers' Dada' - mind-numbingly dull. The most challenging work I've seen of late is by The British Art Resistance. Their document, 'A Call for Heroes in an Age of Cowards', is apt in these days of witless chancers.

A moustache to a man is the same as a fringe is to a woman. When you've got it, you want to grow it out; when you've grown it out, you want to cut it.

One of my biggest problems in life has been my inability to lie.

We are not actually in charge of life, yet behave as if we are the masters of our own destiny. The realization of this fact is quite a hard one. The ridiculousness of our pomposity and presumption can only result in anger or humor.

I coined this term 'freedom thru limitation' back in the '90s because I was sick of art being treated like pop, because of this boring 'anything can be art' theory.

Before 1999, Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas offered to get me exhibitions, but joining the Stuckists put a kaibosh on all that - because I wasn't prepared to be controlled. I agreed to co-found the Stuckists to be allowed to say what I wanted, and I left the Stuckists because I didn't really want to be in them in the first place.

I'm not trying to achieve perfection. I don't like this forced control people have over work.