Jean-Michel Basquiat

I was a cute kid.

I played a guitar with a file, and a synthesizer.

Medicine men live in caves.

I have done only two portraits: one of the artist Francesco Clemente and another of Andy Warhol.

For a while, I was drawing on good paper, but now I've gone back to the bad stuff. I put matte medium on it. If you put matte medium on it, it seals up, so it doesn't really matter.

I thought I was going to be a bum the rest of my life.

I wanted to be a cartoonist when I was young.

If I'm away from painting for a week, I get bored.

My basic influence had probably been Peter Max.

I start a picture and I finish it.

My favorite Twombly is 'Apollo and the Artist,' with the big 'Apollo' written across it.

Occasionally, when I get mad at a woman, I'll do some great, awful painting about her.

Charles Saatchi has never liked my work at all.

Believe it or not, I can actually draw.

The country makes me more paranoid, you know? I think the crazy people out there are little crazier.

The black person is the protagonist in most of my paintings. I realized that I didn't see many paintings with black people in them.

I was a really lousy artist as a kid. Too abstract expressionist; or I'd draw a big ram's head, really messy. I'd never win painting contests. I remember losing to a guy who did a perfect Spiderman.

I want to make paintings that look as if they were made by a child.

I have a painting where somebody's holding a chicken, and underneath the chicken is somebody's head.

I wanted to build up a name for myself.