Raymond Pettibon Quotes

Art comes after the fact, as a witness to certain things that have happened.

Art can be a kind of therapeutic, or kind of a fantasy life, or wish fulfillment...o r creating this alternate universe. Art gives me the freedom to do that.

Forgiveness is the nature of my art in general. It's expressing love and compassion, the kinds of things that don't make sense in any other context other than emotive expression.

I don't want to express violence or anger or hate in my art. I want to express forgiveness.

There's always a latent or inferred image in my writing. And I can almost always assume if I do a drawing that it will eventually have text.

I don't drive often, because the parking makes it too much of a nuisance. And I could never go back to commuting or anything. I'd just get fed up with it.

It's very rare that someone gets the death penalty for charges of conspiracy, for his influence, for his Svengali-Rasputin act.

No one can help me with my work. I think I do best when I am just left alone.

It's an extreme to go from an artist like myself to a commercial artist with art directors looking over your shoulder, or any other knucklehead telling you what your art should look like.

I really don't see any influence of my work on any artists. But I do think I've had an influence on drawings' being shown. I've had an influence on the economics of it.

When I see a train, I want to take it in my arms.

My work is more driven by the creative word. It's immersed in other writing and printed work, rather than drawn so much from life or past experience.

Everybody has his own great ideas about what my art should be. But I can do whatever I like and there aren't many constraints to the way I work, whether I'm using a brush with ink or paint.

Sometimes there's a vacuum that has to be covered.

I was very influenced by comics. The drawing style, definitely, I was interested in. My style of drawing is largely a comic style, but it's also much more obvious than comics.

In communist Russia, their major organ was Pravda, which means "truth." The Russians knew how to read between the lines. They didn't take their literature literally.

I don't make art with grandiose delusions. I do know there are limits to what art is capable of. That makes it all the more appealing to me. And I can do as I will whenever I choose.

Back in the '80s, a lot of the images I used were from TV or from films on TV.

I'd rather do anything than make commercial art. I didn't go to school for art. Making art has certain advantages for me but they would never be in commercial direction.

I don't have extravagant tastes or expenses - like with cars, clothes, or whatever.

Most writers do similar things in their minds. It's how the mind works, basically.

I don't know if it's good to be stuck at one place. I'm probably too close to home on that. Because that can happen-where I'm not the best judge of my own work.

If you don't use an image now you might have a place to put it in further down the line - and I have a lot of unfinished drawings.

I don't feel that I decided deliberately I'm going to write something and have it stand alone. Somewhere by the end I think it would probably revert to imagery.

Whenever I reference something, it usually comes back at some point. I don't know why.