keith-haring

There is one question George is asked about life and art and which is more important, and George said art is more important because it is immortal. This struck a very deep note inside me. For I am quite aware of the chance that I have or will have AIDS. The odds are very great and, in fact, the symptoms already exist. My friends are dropping like flies and I know in my heart that it is only divine intervention that has kept me alive this long. I don__ know if I have five months or five years, but I know my days are numbered. This is why my activities and projects are so important now. To do as much as possible as quickly as possible. I__ sure that what will live on after I die is important enough to make sacrifices of my personal luxury and leisure time. Work is all I have and art is more important than life.

July 7, 1986: Montreux It is only now that I realize the importance of a biography. I mean I always have realized that I enjoy to read (and have learned many things from) the biographies of artists whom I admire. It is probably my main source of education. In the beginning of my __areer_ (what an awful word) I was misled by a teacher who thought the things I was writing to be pretentious and self important. Years later, when I read those things I wrote in 1978, it didn__ seem so pretentious for almost everything I wrote about __anting to do,_ I actually did in the four or five years that followed.