Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Every party is the same, too many people, too little food, and you have to wait around. I'm extremely bored with parties.
Being an artist is not easy - I have always said that to the students I have taught over the years. It's a huge sacrifice.
Your ego can become an obstacle to your work. If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.
When you have a nonverbal conversation with a total stranger, then he cant cover himself with words, he cant create a wall.
The public is in need of experiences that are not just voyeuristic. Our society is in a mess of losing its spiritual centre.
When you have a nonverbal conversation with a total stranger, then he can't cover himself with words, he can't create a wall.
My work is immaterial. It's not painting, it's not sculpture, it's emotions. I'm giving you something to experience yourself.
Even now, I have traces of the good little girl. When I am not performing, for instance, I am really very quiet and ordinary.
Western culture has more need because they're so much more degenerated. They're so much more hurt, and misbalanced completely.
Most artists create foundations where they put their own work. Here I'm not putting my own work. I'm just creating the chambers.
One of the most wonderful things for me is to watch somebody else perform, where I am the audience - I love this more than ever.
I'm interested in utopian communities of the past. Many of them didn't survive and I'm examining closely the reasons they failed.
Time is an illusion. Time only exists when we think about the past and the future. Time doesn't exist in the present here and now.
We are used to cleaning the outside house, but the most important house to clean is yourself - your own house - which we never do.
I'm interested in asking: 'What does feminine energy mean?' I don't have answers - I just have questions and interesting examples.
We don't have politicians with dignity and morals. We never have, not since [Nelson] Mandela and [Mahatma ] Gandhi. It's really rare.
There's not any subject the public doesn't know about me. I don't have secrets, and this is so liberating because this makes me free.
I hate kitchens. I don't understand these enormous American kitchens that take up half the living room and then they just order pizza.
I had so much fear of blood, and the first thing I did was to cut myself to see what happens. That's the only way to rebuild yourself.
In every ancient culture, there are rituals to mortify the body as a way of understanding that the energy of the soul is indestructible.
That's something that I'm trying to do in my work, to send a message to western people. They're the ones who are completely disconnected.
Once you live in New York, you can't live anywhere else. Living in Paris is like going in slow motion. It's so bourgeois. I get so bored.
The function of the artist in a disturbed society is to give awareness of the universe, to ask the right questions, and to elevate the mind.
When you have so much pain, you think you will lose consciousness. If you say to yourself, ‘So what, lose consciousness,’ the pain goes away.
In real life, you just work for the ordinary self, but in the front of audience you become the superself. That's a completely different thing.
I always do big birthday things. In three years, I'm 70. I'm going to do something outrageous. In America, everyone's always hiding their age.
I believe so much in the power of performance I don't want to convince people. I want them to experience it and come away convinced on their own.
You know the movie "Rashomon" from [Takeshi] Kurosawa, when all the people in the forest see something different? Each performance was like that.
I'm talking about intellectually and emotionally challenging, but at the same time it's actually not that challenging. So there's this dichotomy.
It's so easy to do things you like. But then, the thing is, when you're afraid of something, face it; go for it. You become a better human being.
I always sent my mother all these huge books I made. When my mother died, I was cleaning her cupboard, and these big books were only 20 pages long.
The only thing I have learned is to find strength in yourself. No one can help you, no one can do anything for you, you have to do the work yourself.
First of all, to do performance art, you really have to give 100 percent. I only know that I have to give 100 percent and then what happens, happens.
Why am I not feminist? Maybe because I come from a country where my mother ruled my life. I never felt in any way that I couldn't achieve what I want.
I've always asked myself since I was young, what is my duty on this planet? What am I there for? Just to hang around? Everybody must have some purpose.
I hate repetition. Even when I am home and have to buy milk, I go a different way each time to avoid having a habit of anything. Habits are really bad.
I think communication starts when words are not present at all ... I think we put so much emphasis on language, actually silence is so much more important.
I have found that long durational art is really the key to changing consciousness. On such a deep level. Not just the performer, but the one looking at it.
I had difficult mother, difficult childhood like she had. She is Sagittarius like I am. I almost died from broken heart because of love. And she really did.
I have this exercise that I propose to everybody: Hug a tree and complain for a minimum 15 minutes. Be yourself, and do something that you really feel deeply.
Dali Lama said, 'when you open the heart of the person with humor, you can tell him the most truth. But if you tell him truth without humor, the heart closes.'
I notice if I'm too fat or if I'm too ugly or there's skin hanging or whatever. When my clothes start not fitting, I get really self-conscious about what I eat.
There's plenty of talented women. Why do men take over the important positions? It's simple. Love, family, children - a woman doesn't want to sacrifice all of that.
My grandmother, when she looked at American movies, she said, 'They're all the same. In the first scene somebody shoots somebody and then everybody makes phone calls.'
You should see ballerinas' feet. They don't have nails. You see beauty, but it's unbelievable pain - with a 40-year pension! That's it, and then life is really finished.
You know I very much respect Yvonne Rainer, she is very important - in American dance, the entire development of modern dance, and creating a wonderful physical language.
I was friends with Susan Sontag the last four years of her life. She had this amazing charisma and so much energy, but she had a sad little funeral in Montparnasse in Paris.
We wanted to prove that I am not just a provocateur, as the television said [referring to a Fox news clip shown in the film]. It's challenging, but it's not just challenging.
My mother and father were partisan national heroes: I learned sacrifice and discipline from them and that a private life is not as important as the message you want to leave.
I had such an intense relationship to every person. I still see people on the street and we lock eyes, and say "Oh my god!" and we just kiss and stay like that and sometimes cry.