Billy Childish Quotations

A moustache to a man is the same as a fringe is to a woman. When you've got it, you want to grow it out; when you've grown it out, you want to cut it.

Failure is fantastic, because you meet yourself and get to know your limitations. This is how I express myself, and I can't do it any other way.

We are not actually in charge of life, yet behave as if we are the masters of our own destiny. The realization of this fact is quite a hard one. The ridiculousness of our pomposity and presumption can only result in anger or humor.

I liked drawing and painting, because the only failure would be to listen to the doubters who wanted me to stop drawing and painting because 'you aren't going to make a living doing that.' I liked looking in art books at the work of painters.

I've not been an admirer of contemporary music since punk rock went off the boil in 1977, but once a year I'll listen to 'Spiral Scratch' by the Buzzcocks, or 'Hippy Hippy Shake' by the Swinging Blue Jeans. Otherwise, I can put up with Chopin or shakuhachi flute in the background.

I've dubbed myself as an amateur, not because I work in different field, but because I do what I do for love.

My favourite things are jokes, friendliness and feeling comfortable.

People could live very happily without the Turner Prize, but they could not live without real communication and emotion.

I've always liked New York, as I like towns with an edge and New York has a European feel, so when I came to play music here in the '80s it was a surprise to me.

I'm not trying to achieve perfection. I don't like this forced control people have over work.

I don't spend a lot of time working if I can help it.

I like feeling at home and knowing people. I like talking about ideas and being friendly.

I make sure I make a painting - that's my job. And I cook the Sunday dinner.

I think that the mythology of Van Gogh's life, and the beauty of his paintings, is unstoppable.

I'm going to get a pair of wire-snips, and I've also started a new campaign to have blank CDs on jukeboxes so you can play the silence.

I coined this term 'freedom thru limitation' back in the '90s because I was sick of art being treated like pop, because of this boring 'anything can be art' theory.

Bowie and McCartney arrived, and the biscuits and caviare started and I left immediately. I don't like shouting across rooms, with people in shiny suits who look like used-car salesmen.

When I was better known than her, she put my name in that tent. I was asked to do Celebrity Big Brother, but why should I? We live in an age where fame is not related to what you do.

Being a fan of authentic Dada, I find today's art - what I call 'Bankers' Dada' - mind-numbingly dull. The most challenging work I've seen of late is by The British Art Resistance. Their document, 'A Call for Heroes in an Age of Cowards', is apt in these days of witless chancers.

We are not actually in charge of life, yet we behave as if we are the masters of our own destiny. The realization of this fact is quite a hard one. The ridiculousness of our pomposity and presumption can only result in anger or humor.

I like being on the margins. You work better there.

It is an artist's duty to be on the wrong end of the see-saw.

I gave up drinking lots of whiskey and began to practice yoga and meditation. As a result I am not dead.

Artists who don't paint aren't artists.

Before 1999, Tracey Emin and Sarah Lucas offered to get me exhibitions, but joining the Stuckists put a kaibosh on all that - because I wasn't prepared to be controlled. I agreed to co-found the Stuckists to be allowed to say what I wanted, and I left the Stuckists because I didn't really want to be in them in the first place.

I loved moustaches. I used to draw myself with one. When I was 14, I was really into war and Van Gogh.

We believe in a society in delusion, and if you're awake and not deluded people tell you you're mad. That's why I'm a freak and they're not. But I'm actually not.

One of my biggest problems in life has been my inability to lie.

We had the same kind of unemployment here as they had in the worst hit places in the North and you're meant to be on a cushy wicket in the South. If you go up to Newcastle, you can tell that the town's really had money, or Liverpool, you know, the northern towns have got grandeur, whereas Medway, being just a sort of garrison town and dockyard town, you don't have anything like Earl Grey Square or anything like that.

I did not like prizes at school. I didn't like tests or exams, or the 11+, or O-levels. Later I hated B.A.s and M.A.s. The reason I hated them is that I don't like being tested, failed or falsely praised by anyone.

Being a fan of authentic Dada, I find today's art - what I call 'Bankers' Dada' - mind-numbingly dull. The most challenging work I've seen of late is by The British Art Resistance. Their document, 'A Call for Heroes in an Age of Cowards', is apt in these days of witless chancers.