Quotes by Keith Haring

“Art should be something that liberates your soul, provokes the imagination and encourages people to go further.”

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

“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, its a natural part in the evolution of the work.”

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

“I think you have to control the materials to an extent, but its 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.”

“When it is working, you completely go into another place, youre tapping into things that are totally universal, completely beyond your ego and your own self. Thats what its all about.”

“There are some images that I will only use once, and not use again because they dont 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.”

“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.”

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

July 7, 1986: Montreux It is only now that I realize the importance of a biography. I mean I always have realized that I enjoy to read (and have learned many things from) the biographies of artists whom I admire. It is probably my main source of education. In the beginning of my “career” (what an awful word) I was misled by a teacher who thought the things I was writing to be pretentious and self important. Years later, when I read those things I wrote in 1978, it didn’t seem so pretentious for almost everything I wrote about “wanting to do,” I actually did in the four or five years that followed.

There is one question George is asked about life and art and which is more important, and George said art is more important because it is immortal. This struck a very deep note inside me. For I am quite aware of the chance that I have or will have AIDS. The odds are very great and, in fact, the symptoms already exist. My friends are dropping like flies and I know in my heart that it is only divine intervention that has kept me alive this long. I don’t know if I have five months or five years, but I know my days are numbered. This is why my activities and projects are so important now. To do as much as possible as quickly as possible. I’m sure that what will live on after I die is important enough to make sacrifices of my personal luxury and leisure time. Work is all I have and art is more important than life.

You have to be objective about money to use it fairly. It doesnt make you any better or any more useful than any other person. Even if you use your money to help people...that doesnt make you better than somebody who has no money but is sympathetic and genuinely loving to fellow human beings.

Children know something that most people have forgotten.

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.

March 28, 1987: Today I read in the New York Times that all of the officers who killed Michael Stewart were again dismissed of charges. Continually dismissed, but in their minds they will never forget. They know they killed him. They will never forget his screams, his face, his blood. The must live with that forever. I hope in their next life they are tortured like they tortured him. They should be birds captured early in life, put in cages, purchased by a fat, smelly, ugly lady who keeps them in a small dirty cage up near the ceiling while all day she cooks bloody sausages and the blood spatters their cage and the frying fat burns their matted feathers and they can nerf escape the horrible fumes of her burnt meat. One day the cage will fall to the ground and a big fat ugly cat will kick them about, play with them like a toy, and slowly kill them and leave their remains to be accidentally stepped on by the big fat pig lady who can’t see her own feet because of her huge sagging tits. An eye for an eye … I’m not afraid of anything I’d ever done. Not ashamed of anything.

Red is one of the strongest colors, its blood, it has a power with the eye. Thats 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 dont 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.

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.