Widow Basquiat Quotes

“Don't cry over anything that can't cry over you”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“But the reason I decided to go to New York was because I had seen Iggy Pop and I thought I had seen God. And because I had sent to Interview magazine for Rene Ricard's first book of poetry, The Blue Book. I had never sent for anything before but something told me to do this. I had read that book over and over again like a Bible. I realized that a book can reach out and embrace you like an arm and make you walk away from everything you thought you understood.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“He paints a simple square house with a triangle roof that has an "S" inside, "Because, Suzanne, you are my home.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“You can leave but you can always come back. You can live here again. Life can be a circle, not just a line.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“He always appreciated expensive things, as if consuming them would make him valuable.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“Jean loved silent movies becaues they were like cartoons. I think that he felt that even in life we should be walking around with a word-blloon above our heads -- you can see this in his art.

He always kept watch for any black characters but, or course, they only appeared as servants, if at all.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“Jean told me that Madonna had been there to visit him the week before I came. Madonna, he said, had asked him to take her on a shopping spree. He asked me why I never asked him to do this and I answered that it never occurred to me to ask him for such a thing.

Then I said, "Will you take me on a shopping spree?"

And he said, "No, I'm completely broke from Madonna's shopping spree.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“Every time Suzanne thinks about her mother's sulfur-blue eyes it rains.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“Don't worry, honey, Suzanne's mother says to Suzanne. One day you'll set the world on fire.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“Jean was black and had to present himself as separate from graffiti somehow. Keith was gay and white and could glamorize graffiti in a way that Jean could not. Jean and Keith both understood this.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“I don't believe in God. But I do believe that each of us has some sort of inner dynamic, that we are not always aware of, that guides us in life to witness certain profound things. These profound things change us forever and bring us closer to our ultimate selves. My relationship with Jean-Michel Basquiat and the death of Michael Stewart were experiences of this nature.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“A lot of the early jazz artists, of course, couldn't even walk through the front door of the hotels and clubs they were playing in and had to enter through back doors and kitchens, and I think Jean felt this was a metaphor for his place in the art world: he had entered through the back door. He broke into the white art world in a way that had never been done before by any black.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“High heels are a plot against women, they throw our spines out and stop us from standing on the ground.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“What most people don’t understand about Jean-Michel is that his crazy behavior had nothing to do with being an enfant terrible. Everything he did was an attack on racism and I loved him for this.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Memoir

“You can’t get your arms to stop making circles in the air if you never say good-bye.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Memoir

“His paintings were inspired by the jazz musicians and he felt akin to them. A lot of the early jazz artists, of course, couldn't even walk through the front door of the hotels and clubs they were playing in and had to enter through back doors and kitchens, and I think Jean felt this was a metaphor for his place in the white art world: he had entered through the back door.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“The businessmen stare, whisper racist remarks and drunkenly laugh at Jean Michel. They think he is a pimp....They think Suzanne is a prostitute. She is heavily made up and has her hair teased up in a beehive.

Jean-Michel tells the maitre d' that he is going to pay for the businessmen's dinner. It costs him three thousand dollars. That is how Jean-Michel laughs back. He does this to fuck with them. Most of Jean-Michel's outlandish behavior has to do with a desire to fuck with people's racism.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“He refuses to sell his paintings and writes" NOT FOR SALE" on some of them. He is furious because people are writing about his ghetto childhood and call him a "graffiti artist" and "primitive." "They don't invent a childhood for white artists," he says.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“While Suzanne is in Canada, the boy who is covering her waitressing shifts at Binibon is killed by Jack Henry Abbott, the man Norman Mailer wrote about in The Belly of the Beast. This man has been living in the halfway houses near the Bowery.

Jean-Michel sees the white, larvae-white paint, the outline of the body drawn by police on the sidewalk.

It takes twenty minutes and forty-two seconds for Jean-Mich to run home and call Suzanne in Canada. "Come home," he cries. "It could have been you.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“Jean-Michel says it frightens him that one day he might accidentally eat pork....

His mother taught him this. Jean said that the pig meat can get right into your heart and make it grow. He said many scientists knew this. He said that they had X-rayed people who eat port and that they have more arteries and veins and that the heart became like a big complicated knot.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“Her mother kissed her forehead at the station, "Be careful, Suzy," she said. "Everybody is hungry." Her brothers and sisters gave her a card. It says, "Suzy Q, we love you." Her father gave her twenty dollars. "Call us," he said.

Suzanne sits still, so skinny, knowing the size of her bones. Knowing how to cover bruises with makeup, Knowing how to disappear. She thinks about Sammy, who came and left so quickly, who sucked the salt out of her fingers. She remembers the day Sammy learned to say, "Ouch." And that was all she would say forever after, "Ouch, ouch, ouch,," like a little song.

Suzanne came home from school one day and Sammy wasn't there anymore. "You know how these kids are, Suzy," Suzanne's mother said. " They just kind of come and go. She was sweet, though.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“We always went to sleep with a mirror covered with coke right at our heads on this headboard shelf. There was white powder ground into it all over the place.

Sometimes he would stay out for thress days at a time on coke and in clubs with other women. He would not talk to me but he wanted me there. He had different people over at night. Sometimes it was fun for me. We would sit around the living-room coffee table and do coke for hours.

The smell of his sweat came out of my pores.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“Jean-Michel is full of fears, especially when he is all coked up. He is afraid that he will be a flash in the pan. He is afraid that the KKK is going to kill him because he is getting so famous and he is black. He installs an elaborate alarm system in the loft. He thinks the CIA is going to murder him.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“I loved to spoil him and he always appreciated expensive things, as if consuming them would make him valuable.
...
He said that he was making tons of money now. Jean drew himself up straight and said, "I am famous just like I told you I would.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“At night Suzanne lies in her bed listening to her father play trictrac with his friends who have also come to Canada as Palestinian refugees. Sometimes, she sneaks down, watches them, and her father pulls her out of the shadows.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“Don’t cry over anything that can’t cry over you,” Suzanne’s mother says.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“The businessmen stare”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“I’ll never marry anyone,” Suzanne says. “No man is big enough for my arms.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“Above all”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story

“Then Jean came back. I told him to get out and that I was going to call the Fire Department. I would never have told Jean that I was going to call the Police. He would never forgive me for that. Never! So I said the Fire Department and that made him laugh and laugh so I punched him very hard. I know it must have hurt, but he just hugged me and laughed.
Then, of course, he painted Bombero a few weeks later but the painting was not funny and the fireman in the painting scares me.”
― Jennifer Clement, Widow Basquiat: A Love Story