“I'm doing what all modern artists do now, which is nothing - just sit ...” — Billy Al Bengston Quote

“I'm doing what all modern artists do now, which is nothing - just sit around and dream about things. I'll do what they call 'the stroke of genius.'”

“Art is something you can't teach, but you can inspire it.”

“I owe a great debt to motor-racing, and the first place I went to in Europe when I was 20 was Italy, and I was extremely influenced by it in books until I got there.”

“The art from the East is influenced by nature and touch. That comes from being more attuned to the environment.”

“We believed that there's no such thing as good art or bad art. Art is art. If it's bad, it's something else. It was a much, much harder line in the '50s and '60s than it is now, because the idea of art education didn't exist - they didn't have a fine arts program when I was a kid.”

“For me, the heyday was in 1959. It was before the Ferus Gallery moved across the street, in the days when Ed Kienholz and Walter Hopps ran it. At that time, art was taken very seriously in terms of being an artist, and not as a profession.”

“I like upbeat songs, and I listen to a lot of Linkin Park and Green Day. I also like hip hop and R&B artists such as Drake and Rihanna.”

“It strikes me as hubris that Universal will buy EMI. What it will do is create a super-major that will have far too much power... I think when Universal goes up over 40 percent market share, I don't see how reasonable regulators can countenance. It will impact not just labels, but artists and cultural diversity.”

“There's something fascinating about watching artists draw.”

“I don't really have a gimmick or a 'thing.' I'm one of the few artists who gets to be himself every day.”

“Most people think I do street art, so I do everything for nothing. I'm an urchin who paints walls and does work for nothing. That's the first misconception about street artists, that we just paint for nothing.”

“In the early '90s, it was grunge; everybody was fully clothed. Alanis Morissette was one of the biggest artists in the world, never wore makeup, wearing Doc Marten boots, and then the Spice Girls turn up, and suddenly it all looks a bit burlesque; suddenly they're the biggest band in the world.”