Jean-Michel Basquiat

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 was a cute kid.

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 had some money, I made the best paintings ever. I was completely reclusive, worked a lot, took a lot of drugs. I was awful to people.

I am not a black artist, I am an artist.

Since I was seventeen I thought I might be a star. I'd think about all my heroes, Charlie Parker, Jimi Hendrix... I had a romantic feeling about how these people became famous.

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

I don't think about art when I'm working. I try to think about life.

My basic influence had probably been Peter Max.

Medicine men live in caves.

I had very few friends. There was nobody I could trust. I left home when I was fifteen. I lived in Washington Square Park.

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