Red is one of the strongest colors, it's blood, it has a power with the eye. That's why traffic lights are red I guess, and stop signs as well... In fact I use red in all of my paintings.

There are some images that I will only use once, and not use again because they don't seem to really hit the nail right on the head, but there are some which are so strong they have to be reduced; sometimes just reusing them makes them stronger.

People were more interested in the phenomena than the art itself. This, combined with the growing interest in collecting art as an investment and the resultant boom in the art market, made it a difficult time for a young artist to remain sincere without becoming cynical.

Drawing is still basically the same as it has been since prehistoric times. It brings together man and the world. It lives through magic.

Red is one of the strongest colors, it's blood, it has a power with the eye. That's why traffic lights are red I guess, and stop signs as well... In fact I use red in all of my paintings.

See, when I paint, it is an experience that, at its best, is transcending reality.

I don't think art is propaganda; it should be something that liberates the soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further. It celebrates humanity instead of manipulating it.

The dripping... well, if it happens, it happens; it does not take anything from the work. The dripping just proves that you were not trying to control the work, but the work was developing by itself and if it drips, it's a natural part in the evolution of the work.

My contribution to the world is my ability to draw. I will draw as much as I can for as many people as I can for as long as I can.

When it is working, you completely go into another place, you're tapping into things that are totally universal, completely beyond your ego and your own self. That's what it's all about.

I think you have to control the materials to an extent, but it's important to let the materials have a kind of power for themselves; like the natural power of gravity, if you are painting on a wall, it makes the paint trickle and it drips; there is no reason to fight that.

Art is for everybody.

Art is nothing if you don't reach every segment of the people.

Everybody draws when they are little.

I am intrigued with the shapes people choose as their symbols to create a language. There is within all forms a basic structure, an indication of the entire object with a minimum of lines that becomes a symbol. This is common to all languages, all people, all times.

I didn't start doing graffiti until two years after I got to New York. Jean Michel Basquiat was one of my main inspirations for doing graffiti. For a year I didn't know who Jean Michel was, but I knew his work.

I grew up in Pennsylvania in a small town. Real small, like one high school and one movie theater. Well, there was a state college there, that was the only good thing about it.

I have been enlightened. I have fallen into poetry and it has swallowed me up.

I've always wanted to work for Walt Disney. That's what I thought I was going to do when I grew up.

If commercialization is putting my art on a shirt so that a kid who can't afford a $30,000 painting can buy one, then I'm all for it.

Nothing is important... so everything is important.

Shapes that contain no inner components of positive/negative relationships will function better with other shapes of the same nature.

The public needs art - and it is the responsibility of a 'self-proclaimed artist' to realize that the public needs art, and not to make bourgeois art for a few and ignore the masses.

When I die there is nobody to take my place.

The best reason to paint is that there is no reason to paint.

Good and Evil are very hard to explain or understand. Im sure that evil exists but it is hard to isolate. Good and evil are intertwined and impossible to separate. They are not completely opposites and in fact are often one and the same.

Twice a week I would receive injections or IV's of Factor VIII which clotted the blood and then broke it down.

Whenever the pressure of our complex city life thins my blood and numbs my brain, I seek relief in the trail; and when I hear the coyote wailing to the yellow dawn, my cares fall from me - I am happy.

Keep your blood clean, your body lean, and your mind sharp.

My great religion is a belief in the blood, the flesh, as being wiser than the intellect. We can go wrong in our minds. But what our blood feels and believes and says, is always true. The intellect is only a bit and a bridle.

The anguish of the neurotic individual is the same as that of the saint. The neurotic, the saint are engaged in the same battle. Their blood flows from similar wounds. But the first one gasps and the other one gives.

I had no blood relatives till I made some.

I know that I'm very lucky to be alive. For 35 or 40 years I've spilt my blood and broke my bones and spent years in hospitals.

Don't forget that the only two things people read in a story are the first and last sentences. Give them blood in the eye on the first one.

It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.

No one will ever know what 'In Cold Blood' took out of me. It scraped me right down to the marrow of my bones. It nearly killed me. I think, in a way, it did kill me.

Some people say my work is often depressing and pessimistic, with the emphasis on death, blood, overcrowding, strange beings and so on, but I don't really think it is.

I say to you that the price of liberty is and always has been blood, human blood, and if our liberties are lost, we shall never regain them except at the price of blood. They must not be lost.

Once blood is shed in a national quarrel reason and right are swept aside by the rage of angry men.

I would give up everything rather than have the blood of white men upon the hands of my people.

I don't need power at the cost of spilled blood.

There are two times of the year that stir the blood. In the fall, for the hunt, and now for lacrosse.

It has been said that the position of woman is the test of civilization, and that of our women was secure. In them was vested our standard of morals and the purity of our blood.

It consists entirely of people who are not related by blood, many of whom can't stand each other.

Basketball is in my blood. It is my obligation to try.

The masses don't shed their blood for the benefit of a few individuals.

Blood and death. That moves me.

It chills my blood to hear the blest Supreme Rudely appealed to on each trifling theme.

Each of us needs something - food, liquor, pot, whatever - to help us survive. Dracula needs blood.