Top 30 Ben Eine Quotes

I have never voted in any election – I usually have more important things to do, especially since I’ve had kids.

I’m a luxury brand.

I don’t get paid for what I do in public places. So I invest the money I earn in galleries back into doing the stuff I passionately want to do on the street.

I love to paint and beautify the most unexpected of places – I’ve painted everything from doorways to trains but have always wanted to do something really huge and different.

You just have to be clever about who you work with. Had I done Gap or H&M, there’s no way Louis Vuitton would have wanted to work with me. So you hold out for the big ones.

An airplane cabin isn’t the first place people think of when they choose an exhibition space, but I’m all for doing things differently.

In certain places around the world, street art is widely accepted and it is part of the urban environment.

I haven’t studied art and I haven’t studied typography, but I’ve still gone out and done it.

I remember finding this book, which showed a New York subway train that had been covered in so much graffiti you couldn’t recognise it was a train. I thought, ‘I want to do that… how do you do that?’

I’m a long way from being a Damien Hirst.

When I got into graffiti, it was the most-exciting art form and it changed the course of my life.

Banksy’s a very selfish, driven, paranoid artist. For good reasons.

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.

The Prime Minister gave President Obama one of my artworks and suddenly my name was all over the news.

I’m hoping that Abu Dhabi’s first piece of street art will inspire the next generation of artists the same way that the discovery of subway art inspired me all those years ago.

When I first got into graffiti I thought it was going to change the world. But when, 20-years-later, it still hadn’t, I got bored of the self-imposed rules.

My friends were stealing cars and shoplifting. I was never into that but I was cheeky. I enjoyed making people laugh.

My philosophy through all my work, be it on canvas or on the street, is about pushing boundaries and not going with the flow because everyone else is doing something a certain way.

David Cameron has given one of my paintings to President Obama. It’s quite mad, really. But it’s OK. It’s not the kind of recognition I seek or get every day, but Cameron seems quite a positive kind of guy and Obama’s a dude. I would probably have had issues if it had been for Bush.

Anyone can lose their home and find their life is turned upside down.

My work isn’t overtly political, although it is sometimes painted in places where I don’t have permission to paint, so that could be construed as a political statement.

Street art, unlike graffiti, adds to the environment and is a positive experience for the artist and community.

Whenever I go anywhere in the world to do a show I try to paint something in the street as well.

I got a message from Downing Street that my picture’s hanging in the White House. Which is weird.

I used to run away from the cops and now I stand and chat with them about my art. I’m older now and it is harder to run away from them. It would be embarrassing for an older man to get arrested by someone half your age. So I gave up running.

I started off tagging stuff – I’m not meant to be having tea and biscuits with the prime minister.

Street artists want to add something to the environment. They consider the audience, whereas graffiti writers don’t care about anyone except themselves, they do it purely for the kick.

For me, it’s mostly about having stuff on the street. You’re walking down the street, you do it every day, and suddenly there’s something that wasn’t there yesterday: something bright and cheerful and different. It might stay there for a year; maybe it will disappear.

It makes me really proud to be able to use my art to spread positive messages around the world.

Painting on the ground was a cool challenge because you can’t just stand back and see what you’re doing.