"There's a famous story about a hobo who hitch-hiked the freight trains across the Australian outback many years ago. He marked his trips by writing the word 'Eternity' everywhere he could in elaborate chalk handwriting. He wrote on so many train cars, bridges and pavements that all across Australia he became part of urban folklore. In 1999 Sydney led the world celebrations for the arrival of a new millennium, and as the eyes of the world watch a spectacular firework display lit up the harbour, at its very center, spanning the length of its famous bridge was the word 'Eternity', spelt out in that same elaborate script by a thousand tiny lights. Fucking sell out."

Banksy Politics See all quotes by Banksy →

React to this quote

More by Banksy

“Well I'm frustrated by many things but trying to get accepted by the art world isn't one of them. This seems difficult for some people to understand - you do not paint graffiti in the vain hope that one day some big fat tory will discover you and put your pictures on his wall. If you draw on walls in public then you are already operating on a higher level.”

“'There's no way you're going to get a quote from us to use on your book cover.' — Metropolitan Police Spokesperson”

“Nobody ever listened to me and I used to think that was their fault. Eventually I got to realise maybe it was the fact I was boring and paranoid that was the problem. But you find that people who know you rarely listen to a word you say, even though they'll happily take as gospel the word of a man they've never met if it's on a record or in a book. If you want to say something and have people listen then you have to wear a mask. If you want to be honest then you have to live a lie.”

“Become good at cheating and you never need to become good at anything else.”

“I think I was lucky to learn so young that there's no such thing as justice and there's nothing you can do about it. The more useful lesson I learnt was that there's no point in behaving yourself. You will probably be punished for something you never did anyway. People get it wrong all the time.”

“The craft is finding a decent drainpipe to get access to the site as much as it is in the art... Van Gogh used short, stumpy brush strokes to convey his insanity - I use short, thin ledges above mainline train tracks." — Evening Post, 2004”

Resonant Thoughts

"It was growing dark but there was still no light in any window. The tune, with its simple variations, was finished. There was silence....Then I heard a door being opened upstairs and soon I also heard…"

— Hermann Hesse

Literature1861–1948

#time

"The monks of the earliest days had not counted on the human ability to generate a new cultural inheritance in a couple of generations if an old one is utterly destroyed, to generate it by virtue of la…"

— Walter M. Miller

Literature1923–1996

#knowledge

"When I was five years old, my mother took me to the Metropolitan. I remember being overwhelmed by the hush — the glamor of the place. Also I used to be mesmerized by the stained-glass windows in churc…"

— Elaine de Kooning

Journalism1918–1989

#time

"The trick is to maintain a kind of naïve amazement at each instant of experience—but, as Montaigne learned, one of the best techniques for doing this is to write about everything. Simply describing an…"

— Sarah Bakewell

Literature1963

#writing