​An oral history of the Toronto graffiti movement told through the voices of the writers themselves.
​

WRITERS

The interviews preserve firsthand perspectives from graffiti writers who contributed to the evolution of Toronto graffiti culture. Below is a small sampling from the book.

Graff is like weeds. It is wild and you can't tame it.
I think that's good for the spirit. ~ Ren 
To break barriers and boundaries and to take
that risk with your spirit and your body, THAT is to be an artist. To IMAGINE and PRODUCE, to bring that experience is one of the most beautiful and difficult, rewarding and intense processes for
any human to experience. ~Bomba
Hope is present and absent. To Hope is to feel + honour life and express gratitude to it. You can not escape hope. Hope
continues both invisibly and visibly.  ~Hope
I can taste the fumes in my mouth, hours have gone by, I’m dead on my feet, there’s no traffic or sounds at all now, it’s got to be really late. Keep on spraying till this is done. I hope no one or thing comes out of that creepy doorway or I will end up swallowing my own heart! ~Daser
It was a true underground network. Now my grandma can type in “graffiti” and see thousands of pics. But back then it was truly an underground network of artists. ~Sec​
I'm not writing this for me. I'm writing it for those cats whose voices have yet to be heard, and who wouldn't necessarily have the opportunity to inscribe their words as they so fearlessly did back then. ~ The Graffiti Knights 
Being in Canada it was a huge issue to find anything graf related. No Internet, no shops no nothing. It took someone actually taking a trip down to NY and bringing something, anything back to get info. That’s when we found out you could
mail order for bags of caps. ~Kane
I come from a time
when it was still pure.
When it wasn’t a million dollar industry. It’s something that’s very positive in my life. It got me through a lot of rough times. ~Skam
Tax the advertisers, the billboards for the public space they use and pay local artists and craftsmen to recreate their
communities. ~Case
90 percent of writers are in it because they want to be a part of some secret society type of thing. They’re in it for the wrong reasons and then what happens is that the scene is full of fake people. So when you’re with fake people, you’re going to have problems. ~Teck
Being jealous resulted in an entire scene recessing instead of progressing. Everybody wins and loses certain things. It’s what you learn along the way that matters. ~ Duro3
The world has much less privacy than it did 20 years ago. A city can never truly eradicate graffiti; it’s here to stay, like drugs and prostitution. ~Insight
If you’re going to go over something, do it all the way, not a half-assed job.  ~Soy
I​t’s creepy how powerful
nostalgia can be. ~Sader
​Some people don’t know their boundaries. ~Wysper
Freight trains represented
decades and decades
of expression and
communication.  You notice things you so easily lose sight of when living in the city. Things like the sky and stars. ~Junction Joe
I want to literally pull people out of themselves and show them a whole new universe. I don’t even believe in having 3D
going in one direction. ~Mediah
You just have to keep remembering that
it’s art. It’s art. ~Elicser
I just don’t like that ego shit. It pisses me off. You wait ‘till someone breaks you down and brings you back to Earth. ~Cola