July 7, 1986: Montreal It is only now that I realize the importance of a biography. I mean I always have realized that I enjoy reading (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 “career” (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’t seem so pretentious for almost everything I wrote about “wanting to do,” I actually did in the four or five years that followed.

Keith Haring Journals