Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Painting is so poetic, while sculpture is more logical and scientific and makes you worry about gravity.
I don't see what else you can spend your money on... If you want to own things, art is a pretty good bet.
No, I don't believe in genius. I believe in freedom. I think anyone can do it. Anyone can be like Rembrandt.
I have titles floating around in my head; I have sculptures floating around in my head. It's like a collage.
I can't understand why most people believe in medicine and don't believe in art, without questioning either.
I had a passport where I wrote 'artist' under 'occupation' and I remember thinking, 'That's it, it's proved!'
People don't like contemporary art, but all art starts life as contemporary - I can't really see a difference.
A painting probably is the most shocking increase in value, from what it costs to make to what you sell it for.
The difference between art about death and actual death is that one's a celebration and the other's a dull fact.
Buy art, build a museum, put your name on it, let people in for free. That's as close as you can get to immortality.
Picasso, Michelangelo, possibly, might be verging on genius, but I don't think a painter like Rembrandt is a genius.
So smoking is the perfect way to commit suicide without actually dying. I smoke because it's bad, it's really simple.
That's the great thing about art. Anybody can do it if you just believe. With practice, you can make great paintings.
But whenever I look at the question of how to live, the answer's always staring me in the face. I'm already doing it.
It's good to have a title that's not just one word. If you're gonna title it, you might as well try and say something.
In an artwork you're always looking for artistic decisions, so an ashtray is perfect. An ashtray has got life and death.
Whenever I've been well-known or hitting the press, I've always had to get my credit card out to prove I'm Damien Hirst.
I mean, people listen to music, and they like that, but I think in England, a lot of people don't like contemporary art.
There was a point I could have just churned out the spot and spin paintings for ever and laughed all the way to the bank.
Art goes on in your head. If you said something interesting, that might be a title for a work of art and I'd write it down.
Commercials are so contemporary and up to date that when you're involved in that visual world, you can't really go backwards.
I've spent a long time avoiding painting and dealing with it from a distance. But as I get older, I'm more comfortable with it.
There's always something you missed or something you didn't notice or somehow you got wrong... I don't really have a beginning.
The goal in life is to be solid, whereas the way that life works is totally fluid, so you can never actually achieve that goal.
My Mum brought me up to believe that if you look after the pennies then the pounds look after themselves, and I could never do it.
But I'm more interested in why people are frightened by Jaws and why Jaws was such a hit than saying Spielberg's my main influence.
In fact, the first piece of art I ever sold, I paid someone else to make the next one, so I could actually keep going out drinking.
It's very easy to say, 'I could have done that,' after someone's done it. But I did it. You didn't. It didn't exist until I did it.
The spot paintings, the spin paintings, they're all a mechanical way to avoid the actual guy in a room, myself, with a blank canvas.
When it comes to the British monarchy, I prefer to be seduced by an image than presented with a real person. It's kind of a Warhol thing.
I wanted a shark that's big enough to eat you, and in a large enough amount of liquid so that you could imagine you were in there with it.
I just wanted to find out where the boundaries were. So far I've found there aren't any. I just wanted to be stopped, and no one will stop me.
I did a butterfly show in Berlin, and we had a guy who's an expert on butterflies; who bred them all and who looks after them all in the space.
I realised that you couldn't use the tools of yesterday to communicate today's world. Basically, that was the big light that went on in my head.
I've had laser eye surgery and I don't wear glasses any more, so people just go, 'You're not Damien Hirst.' I don't get recognized on the street.
It'd be nice to make lots of money but it's quite difficult, because every time I make lots of money I make a bigger piece that costs lots of money.
People always say that my work is sensational or shocking but there are truly shocking things you could do, and my sculptures don't go anywhere near that.
I've never learned to drive because I get lots of ideas when I'm a passenger in a car. I love to get in a car with a driver and just think and work things out.
Sensation is an element of what I do, and why not? It's not sensational for the sake of being sensational, but it's sensational art... It's like touching skin.
Kids are naturally gifted at art from a very young age. The problem is when they get older and become self-conscious. The process should always be fun, though.
But the answer to how to live is to stop thinking about it. And just to live. But you're doing that anyway. However you intellectualise it, you still just live.
A lot of people thought I wasn't doing anything because I was spending a lot of time socialising and going out, but I've always managed to get work actually done.
Great art - or good art - is when you look at it, experience it and it stays in your mind. I don't think conceptual art and traditional art are all that different.
I definitely think about death. And every day your relationship with death changes. And every day I sort of feel like I know it more. I've always thought about it.
I think art is good at looking back and looking forward. I don't think art is good at looking head-on. At the end of the day, people are more important than paintings.
But for me, from my point of view, I don't mind if it falls over... if you break the glass you replace the glass, if the sheep falls out you can always get a new sheep.
I did a load of medicine cabinets a long time ago and I named them after Sex Pistols songs. I suppose I must be getting old if I'm naming work after Philip Larkin poems.
I always look at money not as a motivating factor but as an element in the composition. You can't ignore it, but you've got to be very careful that it's not motivating you.
Death's just something that inspires me, not something that pulls me down. I used to get called morbid at school. I have always loved horror films; I like being frightened.
Because it's visual art, a lot of it comes from childhood experience but then a lot comes from the visual language - in advertising and stuff like that - which is around us.