Graffiti Quotes

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

I've never really considered myself just a street artist. I consider myself a populist. ~ Shepard Fairey

Our children will be told what Israel has done.' graffiti on the Wall in Bethlehem, opposite Aida refugee camp, 2008 ~ William Parry

Someone had scrawled graffiti in black marker on the metal: JUST DIE, it said. Like it was easy. ~ Neil Gaiman

At New York City's Rose Center of Earth and Space, we display a timeline spiral of the Universe that begins at the Big Bang and unfolds 13.8 billion years. Uncurled, it's the length of a football field. Every step you take spans 50 million years. You get to the end of the ramp, and you ask, where are we? Where is the history of our human species? The entire period of time, from a trillion seconds ago to today, from graffiti-prone cave dwellers until now, occupies only the thickness of a single strand of human hair, which we have mounted at the end of that timeline. You think we live long lives, you think civilizations last a long time, but not from the view of the cosmos itself. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

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

When I take my old copies of the phenomenologies of religion down from the shelf and thumb through their pages, I feel as if I were walking through the halls of abandoned buildings. My graduate school notes lie heavy in the margins, like scrawls of graffiti on the walls, attesting to the fact that human once contested these spaces. I wonder, each time I close one of these volumes and put it back on the shelf, whether the puff of dust that arises from its binding is not a reminder that systems are built to crumble, and the grander the system, the more spectacular the fall. ~ Malcom David Eckel

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

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

Today I believe that man cannot escape his destiny to create whatever it is we make - jazz, a wooden spoon, or graffiti on the wall. All of these are expressions of man's creativity, proof that man has not yet been destroyed by technology. But are we making things for the people of our epoch or repeating what has been done before? And finally, is the question itself important? We must ask ourselves that. The most important thing is always to doubt the importance of the question. ~ Orson Welles

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

I started painting graffiti in the classic New York style of big letters and characters but I was never very good at it. ~ Banksy

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

My intention all along had been to get my wakeboarding legs back this first day. Maybe I'd do tricks when we went out the next day. I didn't want to get too cocky and bust ass in front of Sean. But as I got more comfortable and forgot to care, I tried a few standbys-a front flip, a scarecrow. There was no busting of ass. So I tried a backroll. And landed it solidly.
Now I got cocky. I did a heelside backroll with a nosegrab. This meant that in the middle of the flip, I let go of the rope handle with one hand, reached down, and grabbed the front of the board. It served no purpose in the trick except to look impressive, like, This only appears to be a difficult trick. I have all the time in the world. I will grab the board. Yawn. And I landed it. This was getting too good to be true.
My brother swung the boat around just before we reached the graffiti-covered highway bridge that spanned the lake. Cameron had spray-painted his name and his girlfriend's name on the bridge, alongside all the other couples' names and over the faded ones. My genius brother had tried to paint his own name but ran out of room on that section of bridge.

McGULLICUDD
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Sean wisely never painted his girlfriends' names. He would have had to change them too often. For my part, I was very thankful that when most of this spray-painting action was going on last summer, I was still too short to reach over from the pile and haul myself up on the main part of the bridge. I probably ~ Jennifer Echols

[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

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

Law breaking, graffiti artist, dumb jock that I am, I'm pretty socially conscious. ~ Duff Goldman

What treasures lay inside! Yes, here were the colors that she had asked for: red, pink, yellow, blue, green, black- all in powder form, of course, not like the one or two bottles of liquid food color that were available at the Lebanese supermarket in town; those were not at all modern- some big blocks of marzipan, and, as always, June had included some new things for Angel to try. This time there were three tubes that looked rather like thick pens. She picked one upend examined it: written along its length were the words 'Gateau Graffito,' and underneath, written in uppercase letters, was the word 'red.' Reaching for the other two pens- one marked 'green' and the other 'black'- she saw a small printed sheet lying at the bottom of the bubblewrap nest. It explained that these pens were filled with food color, and offered a picture showing how they could be used to write fine lines or thick lines, depending on how you held them. It also guaranteed that the contents were kosher. Eh, now her cakes were going to be more beautiful than ever! ~ Gaile Parkin

The usual graffiti on the wall. JRH WAS HERE. NICK LOVES CASS. Visitors leaving the worst parts of themselves behind in fluorescent paint. ~ Anthony Horowitz

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

My students tag tables, walls, and chairs because their greatest fear is that no one will ever remember them. They do not believe they can give impassioned speeches, rally people in protest, paint masterpieces. They think they will die, small and forgotten, and it dictates their every action. ~ Thomm Quackenbush

A drone is often preferred for missions that are too "dull, dirty, or dangerous" for manned aircraft."

PROLOGUE

The graffiti was in Spanish, neon colors highlighting the varicose cracks in the wall. It smelled of urine and pot. The front door was metal with four bolt locks and the windows were frosted glass, embedded with chicken wire. They swung out and up like big fake eye-lashes held up with a notched adjustment bar.

This was a factory building on the near west side of Cleveland in an industrial area on the Cuyahoga River known in Ohio as The Flats.

First a sweatshop garment factory, then a warehouse for imported cheeses then a crack den for teenage potheads. It was now headquarters for Magic Slim, the only pimp in Cleveland with his own film studio and training facility.

Her name was Cosita, she was eighteen looking like fourteen. One of nine children from El Chorillo. a dangerous poverty stricken barrio on the outskirts of Panama City. Her brother, Javier, had been snatched from the streets six months ago, he was thirteen and beautiful.

Cosita had a high school education but earned here degree on the streets of Panama.

Interpol, the world's largest international police organization, had recruited Cosita at seventeen. She was smart, street savvy, motivated and very pretty. Just what Interpol was looking for.

Cosita would become a Drone! ~ Nick Hahn

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

As a matter of fact, that was a bit of a problem for me at the beginning of my career - the problem of identification. In The Conversation I played a character who was gay, so nobody recognised me from American Graffiti. When I did Apocalypse Now, after Star Wars, I played an intelligence officer of the American army. George Lucas saw the footage I had done and didn't recognise me until halfway through the scene. ~ Harrison Ford

Graffiti is like building a career. And there is a dialogue with the other artists out there mostly fellow writers because a lot of people who don't paint just see a blur when they look at it. ~ KAWS

I started when I was 15 years old. And at that time, I was not thinking about changing the world, I was doing graffiti - writing my name everywhere, using the city as a canvas. I was going in the tunnels of Paris, on the rooftops with my friends. Each trip was an excursion, was an adventure. ~ JR

spattering the walls with pulp and guano, like graffiti artists. ~ Henri Cole

The thing about social media is that it is anonymous, so it can be much more vitriolic and extreme than normal media and yet it is there for everyone to see. It is kind of like electronic graffiti. The political process is accelerated and intense in a way that I don't believe it ever really has been before. ~ Tony Abbott

I got arrested for graffiti. I got arrested - a lot of, like, underage drinking, drunk in public, shoplifting, you know, your various, like, suburban arrests, I guess. ~ James Franco

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

Even graffiti above a tunnel can begin a journey that never ends. ~ Gloria Steinem

If you still believe that aliens would travel hundreds of light years to carve temporary graffiti in our wheat, then your imagination is one of the seven wonders of the world, and should be bronzed. ~ Seth Shostak

It's strange with graffiti. You put a lot out, but you don't get that much back because not many people know who's doing it. You have your peers of about 10 guys who know you are the one painting. ~ KAWS

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

Graffiti is a pathetic attempt at anonymous recognition. ~ Randall Dale Adams

Swearing, drunkenness, "haunting bad houses," fighting, and drawing graffiti - hugh penises were a favourite - on the palace walls were all punishable by warnings, ~ Alison Weir

Whom one is speaking to - or which aspect of their character - fundamentally determines the meaning and consequences of an exhortation. 'Indulge Your Desires' comes across very differently on a billboard advertising SUVs than it does spray-painted across the broken windows of an SUV dealer. It follows that what you say is not nearly as important as how and when you say it. ~ CrimethInc.

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

It was almost as if we'd passed our gaze from the healthy skin of a supermodel to the ragged infections of a burn-victim's corpse. Any industry buildings that had once stood proudly in the city were now hollowed-out skeletons with tents decorating their innards. The tall apartment buildings were burned and then rebuilt into towering layers of jagged, cut metal, brightly colored canvas roofs, solar panels, and graffiti. ~ Michael-Scott Earle

I started off as a graffiti artist in the South Bronx. My tag name was 'Loco' because I would go crazy and tag anywhere I wanted, in the weirdest places. ~ Swizz Beatz

But on most days, especially the warm ones, life exhausts him; the worsening traffic and graffiti and company politics, everyone grousing about bonuses, benefits, overtime. Sometimes in the slow heat of summer, long before dawn, Volkheimer paces in the harsh dazzle of the billboard light and feels his loneliness on him like a disease. ~ Anthony Doerr

Oh, Williamsburg. There was a point when you seemed like a scary, tough neighborhood, but now it's obvious that the graffiti on your walls gets put there by art students. ~ Imogen Binnie

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

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

Obviously murder and graffiti are two vastly different crimes. But they are part of the same continuum, and a climate that tolerates one is more likely to tolerate the other. ~ Rudy Giuliani

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

There are four basic human needs; food, sleep, sex and revenge. ~ Banksy

No matter how the official narrative of this turns out," it seemed to Heidi, "these are the places we should be looking, not in newspapers or television but at the margins, graffiti, uncontrolled utterances, bad dreamers who sleep in public and scream in their sleep. ~ Thomas Pynchon

You're supposed to be the big boss."
Sam said nothing. The crowd hushed, ready to watch this one-on-one confrontation.
"You're the big boss of the freaks," Zil yelled. "But you can't do anything. You can shoot laser beams out of your hands, but you can't get enough food, and you can't keep the power on, and you won't do anything about that murderer Hunter, who killed my best friend." He paused to fill his lungs for a final, furious cry. "You shouldn't be in charge."
"You want to be in charge, Zil? Last night you were running around trying to get a lynch mob together. And let's not even pretend that wasn't you responsible for graffiti I saw driving into town just now."
"So what?" Zil demanded. "So what? So I said what everyone who isn't a freak is thinking."
He spit the word "freak," making it an insult, making it an accusation.
"You really think what we need right now is to divide up between freaks and normals?" Sam asked. "You figure that will get the lights turned back on? That will put food on people's tables? ~ Michael Grant

Don't you think it's sad some people are only remembered by the graffiti about them on the bathroom stalls? ~ Cole Gibsen

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

Scars - the graffiti of violence. - Harry Dresden ~ Jim Butcher

When I got this job in New York five months ago, I wasn't confident enough to come to the city without a roommate. When I first saw Miracle on 34th Street as a child, I knew there was an apartment overlooking Central Park with my name on it. But then Welcome Back, Kotter got me worried that I'd have to take an elevated train covered in graffiti to get to it. Eventually, after watching Fame, I realized that I might just be scrappy enough to get by if I learned a heartfelt song or two and wore the right leg warmers. ~ Josh Kilmer-Purcell

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

The deeper we go, the fewer the lights, the dirtier the buildings, the stranger the animals, but the more brilliant the graffiti. ~ Pierce Brown

Poetic Terrorism
WEIRD DANCING IN ALL-NIGHT computer-banking lobbies. Unauthorized pyrotechnic displays. Land-art, earth-works as bizarre alien artifacts strewn in State Parks. Burglarize houses but instead of stealing, leave Poetic-Terrorist objects. Kidnap someone & make them happy. Pick someone at random & convince them they're the heir to an enormous, useless & amazing fortune--say 5000 square miles of Antarctica, or an aging circus elephant, or an orphanage in Bombay, or a collection of alchemical mss. ...
Bolt up brass commemorative plaques in places (public or private) where you have experienced a revelation or had a particularly fulfilling sexual experience, etc.
Go naked for a sign.
Organize a strike in your school or workplace on the grounds that it does not satisfy your need for indolence & spiritual beauty.
Graffiti-art loaned some grace to ugly subways & rigid public monuments--PT-art can also be created for public places: poems scrawled in courthouse lavatories, small fetishes abandoned in parks & restaurants, Xerox-art under windshield-wipers of parked cars, Big Character Slogans pasted on playground walls, anonymous letters mailed to random or chosen recipients (mail fraud), pirate radio transmissions, wet cement...
The audience reaction or aesthetic-shock produced by PT ought to be at least as strong as the emotion of terror-- powerful disgust, sexual arousal, superstitious awe, sudden intuitive break ~ Hakim Bey

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

A graffiti moon cut by the shadow of power lines. A prisoner moon, Leo wrote. ~ Cath Crowley

Blank walls are a shared canvas and we're all artists. ~ Carla H. Krueger

[The graffiti] had a sort of Christmassy look to it. The green paint tended to be short top to bottom but long front site to side. The red paint was fat and closed up. It sort of looked like garlands with red balls hanging down. There was even "Ho, ho, ho" if you skipped around a little and deleted an "e" on the last "ho". Our green painter had a limited vocabulary and occasionally mixed up a professional working woman with a garden implement. ~ Patricia Briggs

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

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'm a melting pot of frienship. ~ Ghost

For me, graffiti writers were always the fascinating eccentrics of hip-hop culture. What they do is secretive by definition, and not remunerative in any way. ~ Adam Mansbach

The art of cartooning is vulgarity. The only reason for cartooning to exist is to be on the edge. If you only take apart what they allow you to take apart, you're Disney. Cartooning is a low-class, for-the-public art, just like graffiti art and rap music. Vulgar but believable, that's the line I kept walking. ~ Ralph Bakshi

The parts of graffiti I like are really antagonizing still - it's not something that a museum would really embrace. ~ Barry McGee

A novel is no different than graffiti in a bathroom stall, it's just more pretentious. ~ Christy Leigh Stewart

Graffiti scratched on a desk of the Barker Street Grammar School in Chamberlain: Carrie White eats shit. ~ Stephen King

Art shows and the institutions end up being the couriers for culture for the next generation and are an important component as well. It may seem ironic from one perspective, but I think if you look at my overall strategy, it's actually not out of step. ~ Shepard Fairey

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

I used to tell everyone I met to be an artist ... I don't do that any more. ~ Banksy

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

You are here." Torin would have bet her pension that the graffiti scrawled next to it in a script she didn't recognize said, "And your luggage is in Antares," or a variation thereof. ~ Tanya Huff

Marina Orlova was hooked on my quote about women not owing men. I scrolled through her posted paintings and recalled a Slovak friend once commenting on a guy wanna-be a great painter, something like this: "Aaano, on bol profesionalnym maljiarom na Slovensku, maloval tam pice a hakove krize po stenach". He meant graffiti, but I hesitate to translate it in detail for it may sound too rough. Another thought is about surreal, sometimes spurious aesthetics mixed with hinted or daring sexuality, which Marina Orlova endorses, deliberately or not, in line of her claimed profession. The posts call to mind The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover or even Titus Andronicus. No wonder, thousands of bozos are attracted to her internet activity because ... , well, the woman is hot. ~ Vinko Vrbanic

Everyone has to scratch on walls somewhere or they go crazy ~ Michael Ondaatje

It's meant to be seen rolling so it should be big and readable. Wildstyles on trains didn't make much sense to me when I first started and they still don't today. ~ Ichabod

A tattoo is graffiti on the temple of the body. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

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

I originally set out to try and save the world, but now I'm not sure I like it enough. ~ Banksy

The traffic system needs a complete rethink," mused Bryant as the unit's only allocated vehicle, a powder-blue Vauxhall with a thoroughly thrashed engine, accelerated through Belsize Park. "Look at these road signs. Ministerial graffiti."
"It's no use lecturing on the problem, Arthur. That's why your driving examiner failed you thirty-seven times."
"What makes you such a great driver?'
"I don't hit things. ~ Christopher Fowler

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

On this spot, on the night of 31 October 1981,
Lily and James Potter lost their lives.
Their son, Harry, remains the only wizard
ever to have survived the Killing Curse.
This house, invisible to Muggles, has been left
in its ruined state as a monument to the Potters
and as a reminder of the violence
that tore apart their family.

And all around these neatly lettered words, scribbles had been added by other witches and wizards who had come to see the place where the Boy Who Lived had escaped. Some had merely signed their names in Everlasting Ink; others had carved their initials into the wood, still others had left messages. The most recent of these, shining brightly over sixteen years' worth of magical graffiti, all said similar things.

Good luck, Harry, wherever you are.
If you read this, Harry, we're all behind you!
Long live Harry Potter.

"They shouldn't have written on the sign!" said Hermione, indignant.
But Harry beamed at her.
"It's brilliant. I'm glad they did. ~ J.K. Rowling

I spray the sky fast. Eyes ahead and behind. Looking for cops. Looking for anyone I don't want to be here. Paint sails and the things that kick in my head scream from can to brick. See this, see this. See me emptied onto a wall. ~ Cath Crowley

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

When the attendant at Britz Rentals of Australia whipped around in our prepaid-in-full honeymoon car, my eyes grew wide and I knew we were in trouble. It was an SUV, yes, and a Toyota Land Cruiser at that--just as Marlboro Man had ordered. It was white and clean and very shiny. And painted in huge bright orange and royal blue lettering across the hood, the roof, all four doors, and the tailgate of the vehicle, were scrawled the enormous words: BRITZ RENTALS OF AUSTRALIA.
I could see Marlboro Man's jaw muscles flex as he beheld his worst nightmare playing out in front of his eyes. He could hardly even bear to gaze upon such an attention-grabbing abomination, let alone conceive of driving it all over an entire continent. Unfortunately, our last-minute attempts to trade to another vehicle proved to be futile; even if Britz hadn't been completely booked that week, it wouldn't have mattered anyway. Every single car in their fleet was smeared with the exact same orange and blue promotional graffiti.
Having no other transportational alternative, we set off on our drive, a black cloud of conspicuousness and, in Marlboro Man's case, dread following us everywhere we went. Being an attention-seeking middle child, I didn't really mind it much. But for Marlboro Man, this was more than his makeup was programmed to handle. As far as he was concerned, we were the Griswolds, and the Land Cruiser was our Family Truckster.
It was a pox on what might have been the perfect honeymoo ~ Ree Drummond

I love London. I love everything about it. I love its palaces and its museums and its galleries, sure. But also, I love its filth, and damp, and stink. Okay, well, I don't mean love, exactly. But I don't mind it. Not any more. Not now I'm used to it. You don't mind anything once you're used to it. Not the graffiti you find on your door the week after you painted over it, or the chicken bones and cider cans you have to move before you can sit down for your damp and muddy picnic. Not the everchanging fast food joints – AbraKebabra to Pizza the Action to Really Fried Chicken – and all on a high street that despite its three new names a week never seems to look any different. Its tawdriness can be comforting, its wilfulness inspiring. It's the London I see every day. I mean, tourists: they see the Dorchester. They see Harrods, and they see men in bearskins and Carnaby Street. They very rarely see the Happy Shopper on the Mile End Road, or a drab Peckham disco. They head for Buckingham Palace, and see waving above it the red, white and blue, while the rest of us order dansak from the Tandoori Palace, and see Simply Red, White Lightning, and Duncan from Blue. But we should be proud of that, too. Or, at least, get used to it. ~ Danny Wallace

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

Here it is, all at once: rightness.
Not the graffiti itself, even though it's undeniably spectacular, but this feeling of making plans and carrying them them through, of meeting people and getting to know them, of being asked to do something and saying Yes, of wanting something, asking for it, making it happen. ~ Nina LaCour

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

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

Think of these pages as graffiti maybe, and where I have scratched up in a public place my longings and loves, my grievances and indecencies, be reminded in private of your own. In that way, at least, we can hold a kind of converse. ~ Frederick Buechner

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 look across at the line of the city. The nights are mean in this place, full of smog that eats the stars. 'Who does feel hope around here? ~ Cath Crowley

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

Lisa's head was tilted back and she was staring at the wall with her mouth open. "It's . . . beautiful," she whispered, touching a slender hand to her breasts.
"It's graffiti," Rigg said flatly.
Lisa shook her head in awe. "And it's beautiful."
Rigg peered up at the wall. "Huh? ~ Ash Gray

Currently, it was leading him through a neighborhood that was on the downside of whatever curve you hoped you'd bought your property on the upside of. Graffiti and garbage were everywhere here. They were everywhere in the city, if it came to that, but elsewhere the garbage was better quality, and the graffiti was close to being correctly spelled. The whole area was waiting for something to happen, like a really bad fire. ~ Terry Pratchett

People were always saying how ugly Southern California was, especially when they came back from their summer vacations. They said it looked plastic or fake or whatever, and talked about all the cool things they saw in Ohio, where their grandparents lived. Or in Pennsylvania. The wall behind the arcade was made of giant sparkling white bricks, just like all the other buildings connected to it. There was graffiti on it, indecipherable gang writing. It was dark now and getting a little cold and then the super-bright lights they have behind stores to keep bums from sleeping by the dumpsters came on, and I thought, people who don't think Southern California is the most beautiful place in the world are idiots and I hope they choke on their tongues. ~ John Darnielle

Every time I see a train, I think of robbing it. Like a Wild West cowboy, I'm out to steal and collect graffiti. ~ Jarod Kintz

He changed his final wad up at the train station. Which was a sad place now. There were homeless people and disturbed people hanging around. There were furtive men with swivel eyes, their hands thrust deep in capacious pockets. There was spray-can graffiti on the walls. Nothing compared to the South Bronx or inner-city Detroit or South-Central LA. But unusual for Germany. Reunification had been a strain. Economically, and socially. And mentally. He had watched it. Like living a comfortable life in a nice little house with your family. And then a whole bunch of relatives moves in. From someplace where they don't really know how to use a knife and fork. Ignorant and stunted people. But German like you. As if a brother had been taken away at birth and locked in a closet. Then in his mid-forties he comes stumbling out again, pale and hunched and blinking. A tough situation to manage. He ~ Lee Child

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