27 Quotes by Barry McGee

My artwork gets stolen all the time; it's ridiculous.

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

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

As soon as I start reading, drawing comes to me more easily. I find I work in my sketchbooks more. But if I'm working on a new show, my reading completely stops except when I'm on a plane. I take a stack of New Yorkers with me. I feel awful about those stacks of New Yorkers.

I read in a weird way. It comes in waves, and then I start, like, five different books at once. It takes me six months to a year to finish them all, since I read mostly on planes.

I see a really good tag on a building, a man passed out in the middle of the street, a couple hugging, a cop arresting a panhandler. I'm interested in how all these things are happening in one block.

Street artists need to get back to actually doing things on the streets instead of in the galleries where they all seem to be ending up. I hope this term 'street artist' falls from the face of the earth, in my honest opinion.

That's immediately how I gauge how healthy a city is-by the amount of tags. It's just in direct competition with advertising. It's still one of the last things that hasn't been corrupted.

I want to do just, like, regular art. Whatever is made today on canvas goes up against all of art history. It's the most radical thing.