Mr. Brainwash quotes: selfless, optimistic, refreshing ideas by the well-known street artist.
“Why dream small when you can dream big?”
“Follow your dreams. Life is beautiful. Never, never give up.”
“There are no rules in life, nobody can tell you the rules. You live your life and you’re trying to be the best at it and you’re trying to follow your dream and nobody’s going to stop it.”
“I think in life a situation cannot happen all the time. You have one moment in life that you decide to do something and you go all the way. I work with a passion and my passion is what drives me into craziness and sometimes craziness makes you do things that you don’t do normally.”
“It’s not playing jokes or being funny, it’s to be real and to do whatever you want.”
“I have learned something after doing it so many times: I always pull it off. That’s what my answer is in my head. Whatever I do, I just do it. I don’t think, I have two hours, three hours, ten hours, two days, whatever—I always work and make it happen. I just don’t give up.”
“I’m a a Pop artist—a street Pop artist. But when I do celebrity portraits, it’s about people, people who had a dream and let it happen. They show that you can become a legend if you want to be. These people had a dream, but they didn’t give up. They let it happen. And that is what I want to show the other people. The message is never, never, never give up, you know? Follow your dreams. Love is the answer, life is beautiful. When you see those iconic people, you realize they are all just people, just like you and me. They become iconic because of what they do.”
“I guess everybody is a celebrity for someone. I’m sure that your mom feels that you are a celebrity to her. She might like you more than Jay-Z! I feel that everyone is kind of a celebrity. You accept that you are just a human. When you meet famous people or iconic stars or something, they become like just regular people to you. When you start to hang out with many celebrities, you start to feel like it’s just people, it’s just humans. They are just people.”
“You know me, I’m not too much into politics. There are people who think about those things but it’s too high-level for me. I’m too much a kid. It’s like if you go to a kindergarten and you ask, ‘What’s happening with Trump, with Russia?’ and they shrug their shoulders. It’s the same thing with me. Me, I’m more like a person to try and make you forget.”
“You cannot be free of something that happened in life when positivity came out from it.”
“Sometimes you need to let people think, let people try and be smart about it. Sometimes you think you’re smart, but you’re wrong.”
“Everybody is a diamond, you just have to sometimes rub it up and down to make it shine.”
“I’m looking at the past and I’m taking from the past, but I’m also bringing something new back and trying to give it another way of being. Art for me is all about freedom, that freedom of expression. I don’t feel that with art there is any boundary.”
“Art cannot be criticized because every mistake is a new creation.”
“Art is freedom and you can do it any way you want. I can take a bottle and put it on top of this table and say this is art. If I believe it, it’s art for me, and it can be art for other people.”
“Art shouldn’t be serious, it is freedom of expression for everyone. Art doesn’t have a manual saying you can’t do this and that.”
“For me, art is all about that freedom, that freedom of expression. It is a time and a moment where you are doing something that you love, and I don’t feel that with art there is any boundary. I always approach my work positively and without disrespecting. My work is just what I felt in the blink of an eye.”
“I feel good. I feel good as an artist, to have a reputation, now. You know, an artist is not a guy that you see in one show and you can decide who it is or if he copies Banksy or if he copies, uh, Shepard Fairey or if he copies—it is about time. You’ll see in time who I will be. Because, with time you will see my creativity. You will see if I am a real artist or not.”
“That’s why I call myself Mr. Brainwash. It’s because everything that I do… somewhere… it brainwash your face!”
“I’m not too much of a snob about the art world, I’m just somebody who makes it fun.”
“If I believe it, it’s art for me. I go all the way and whatever happens happens. At least I don’t regret that I didn’t do it.”
“I don’t get bought out. I’m a real person with real trust and that’s how it is.”
“It’s not my life. I’m about positivity and I’ll be positive. I’m not always happy, but I’m happy not to be happy. I turn everything into positivity. I choose my life to be about doing good and helping as many people as I can. That’s my life. I like to help organizations by donating my works and they sell them. I get letters from schools and hospitals thanking me. Whatever cause comes up to me, I never say no. If a guy comes to me and says his son is sick and really loves my work, I don’t worry he’ll take it and sell it.”
“I don’t do rules, so I make my own rules.”
“I’m real; I am who I am. I’m continuing. What you see now is mine. I’m here, it’s me. My life is my life; nobody’s going to take that from me.”
“Mr. Brainwash, aka Thierry Guetta. People know me as both names. It’s the same person.”
“I have a mind that is bigger than what people think. Sometimes I want something that is 20 feet high and it’s a television and I’m not going to be the one putting it together. So hiring some people to have what I have in my mind—it’s whatever it is. I get things done the way that I want it. So it doesn’t matter. Like, somebody who built the Eiffel tower, it’s not the artist who is going to build it. He’s going to have some other people that are going to build it for him and he’s going to be there to see the evolution of it and I guess everything else too. Like building a building, you know? Some people have it in their mind, they design it, and some people help to create it.”
“The street is open to everyone, it’s the biggest gallery we can get, with very few rules. A couple of years ago, I got stopped by the police, and the district attorney saw me as a leader in the world of graffiti. They were trying to restrict me from being close to paint. In the end they agreed I couldn’t be near paint after five p.m. I had to sign that if I got caught I’d do a year in jail.”
“Sometimes art without money is better art. Sometimes you do something better without money so money doesn’t make a difference. Money makes it happen that you can do bigger things. You can fly, you can go anywhere. It’s something that keeps you rolling and keeps you doing what you want to do in life.”
“I don’t need anything, I’m a pretty simple guy. I don’t like jewelry, I don’t like cars, I just like life. Life is beautiful, I never get bored of saying it. If you have the energy to keep smiling to the world, the world will smile at you. If you start loving, people will love you. You can throw any bad thing at me and I’ll turn it into good.”
“It’s all about building an empire around me. And my empire that I want to build is to make people smile and show them that life is beautiful. I want to help as many people as I can, and bring them into my life, and I will never stop. I’m not materialistic at all, I don’t care about any of that. The only care that I have is people’s hearts and trying to show them that they are a diamond and they should believe in themselves.”
“We need the haters, it’s part of the world. If I could do something and 200 people say it’s cheap and they don’t like it, but one kid says I love it, goes home and starts to follow his dreams, then I’ve won.”
“Some people come up to me in the street and they smile. And they come to me and they say, ‘You know what? I dropped everything that I had because of you. I stopped my work, I’m following my heart and I’m doing it.'”
“That’s what I’m fighting and fighting for—to tell everyone that life is possible. To make it happen. And life is beautiful.”
“Creativity is in my heart. When I say ‘heart’ I’m saying ‘art.’ My heart is a piece of art. Nobody can understand it. That’s why I say: time will tell how the world will see me. Whatever happens I am here, I am strong, I am never going to stop. Never, never. Never going to stop. Let them come, they cannot take my soul.”
“I’m talking to everyone. Everyone. It’s not just keep smiling, it’s enjoy your life and be happy.”
“Have a great life, you deserve it.”
