Damien Hirst Quotations

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.

Painting is so poetic, while sculpture is more logical and scientific and makes you worry about gravity.

I was taught to confront things you can't avoid. Death is one of those things. To live in a society where you're trying not to look at it is stupid because looking at death throws us back into life with more vigour and energy. The fact that flowers don't last for ever makes them beautiful.

Sometimes when you're drunk you can see better.

So smoking is the perfect way to commit suicide without actually dying. I smoke because it's bad, it's really simple.

I think suicide is the most perfect thing you can do in life.

That's the great thing about art. Anybody can do it if you just believe. With practice, you can make great paintings.

It's amazing what you can do with an E in A-Level art, a twisted imagination and a chainsaw.

'Painting like a child' isn't a negative for me... it's something only great artists can really achieve. The childlike quality of some of Picasso's drawings is precisely what makes them so masterful and extraordinary; the ability to express complete visions, feelings and portraits through a continuous line.

I was brought up Catholic, and I felt the power of art from a very young age - seeing the brutality of all those images of flayed apostles and tortured saints was a pretty strong introduction.

I have always been aware that you have to get people listening before you can change their minds. Any artist's big fear is being ignored, so if you get debate, that's great.

But I think it's more that when you're young, you're invincible, you're immortal - or at least you think you are. The possibilities are limitless, you're inventing the future. Then you get older and suddenly you have a history. It's fixed. You can't change anything. I find that a bit disturbing, to be honest.

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.

Most people live in the city and go to the country at the weekend, and that's posh and aristocratic, but actually to live in the country and come to London when you can't take it any more is different.

When I used to do abstract paintings at school, like everyone else, the tutor said these would make great curtains. I would always neglect the formal stuff that was going on by using colour, because colour kind of came naturally to me.

For me, art is always a kind of theater.

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.

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.

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.

People don't like contemporary art, but all art starts life as contemporary - I can't really see a difference.

Even as a kid in drawing class, I had real ambition. I wanted to be the best in the class, but there was always some other feller who was better; so I thought, It cant be about being the best, it has to be about the drawing itself, what you do with it. Thats kind of stuck with me.

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.

Being best is a false goal, you have to measure success on your own terms.

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.

The difference between art about death and actual death is that one's a celebration and the other's a dull fact.

Picasso, Michelangelo, possibly, might be verging on genius, but I don't think a painter like Rembrandt is a genius.

I remember when you used to have your profession on your passport and I always thought that being a painter was the best one to be, because my heroes were Goya and Francis Bacon.

I always feel like the art's there and I just see it, so it's not really a lot of work.

The idea of being a painter, I've always thought, is better than being an artist or a sculptor.

The spot paintings and spin paintings were trying to find mechanical ways to make paintings.

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'm 43. I'm not ready to sit down in a chair with my name on it yet.

Museums are for dead artists. I'd never show my work in the Tate. You'd never get me in that place.

I think an ashtray is the most fantastically real thing.

You need a big ego to be an artist.

I've been asked to do a retrospective since I was about 28 and I always thought that was a bit odd. It's great to look forward as an artist because in the future the possibilities are infinite; you look back and it's all fixed so it's a scary thing.

I think I've always been afraid of painting, really. Right from the beginning. All my paintings are about painting without a painter. Like a kind of mechanical form of painting. Like finding some imaginary computer painter, or a robot who paints.

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.

A painting probably is the most shocking increase in value, from what it costs to make to what you sell it for.

I gave up painting by 16. I secretly thought I would have been Rembrandt by then.

Making art, good art, is always a struggle. It can make you happy when you pull it off. There's no better feeling. It's beauteous. But it's always about hard work and inspiration and sweat and good ideas.

I used to believe I was going to live forever. And then you suddenly become aware that you're not.

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.

As a father, I would say I am more like a mother. I do a lot of hugging.

I had a passport where I wrote 'artist' under 'occupation' and I remember thinking, 'That's it, it's proved!'

I think money is important for everyone, because the lack of it is so painful.

Immortality is really desirable, I guess. In terms of images, anyway.

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.

No, I don't believe in genius. I believe in freedom. I think anyone can do it. Anyone can be like Rembrandt.

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.

There's no possible way you can get what you want.

But it's like the horror of being in a studio with a blank canvas. I used to always run out of ideas because there are so many possibilities and I would just think, well what am I going to do now!

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.

Since I was a child, death is definitely something that I think about every day. But I think that everybody does. You try and avoid it, but it's such a big thing that you can't.

For me, art is always a kind of theater. When I started the spot paintings, I made them as an endless series. But I was never serious about it being an endless series. It was just an implied endless series. The theater means you just have to make it look good for that moment in the spotlight.

In an artwork you're always looking for artistic decisions, so an ashtray is perfect. An ashtray has got life and death.

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.

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.

I think I like big issues, but I don't believe in God or religion.

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.

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.

It's such a crass idea - you're either in love or out of love.

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 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.

I used to watch 'Top of the Pops' when I was a kid and say 'Yeah!' or 'Boo!' at every single song. So there was nothing in the middle. You brutally put it on one side or another.

It's a great advantage to be able to play people off against each other, isn't it? You go to Christie's and get a quote on something. And then you go to Phillips' and you tell them what Christie's has given you. I like auctions for artists.

The idea of going on tour for the rest of my life with old works is not that exciting. As an artist I definitely think the work in future is going to be better than the work in the past, otherwise why do it?

She wasn't much to look at, but she was great to dance with.

One thing leads to another with my work.

I have a Californian girlfriend and she's into a lot of Californian bands so I listen to that.

I think it's just, I really enjoy art, and I just hope that when people come and see the exhibition, I want them to be just grabbed and thrown around a bit by visual things.

I think if you've made it, why not name it?

I thought it might be nice to have a little line on the side going, just in case, of doing famous people's pets for them, in formaldehyde.

We have had some animal rights things but they all get the facts wrong so they have to go away looking a bit stupid.

You'd never look at a Rembrandt and say, 'That's just wood and canvas and paint - how much?!' It's all about how many people want it. It works on a pair of jeans as well - they're just material and stitching, and as soon as you walk out of the shop, they're worth nothing.

Whereas if you suddenly go, OK, I choose to die now, you take the matter into your own hands.

I always try to make everyone mellow down, make sure everybody's happy. The people I have employed have always kind of stayed with us. A lot of people who come to work for you are artists in their own right. And they want to work for you because they want to pick something up.

You've got to be oblivious to other people, the push and pull of other people's opinions, the way other people measure success. It's then that you realize you are 100 percent who you are and you have to use that who-you-are 100 percent in order to create great things.

For artists it's a lot easier to make art in bad times than it is in good times. When you've got no money it's easy to just drink your way through it and make great art. But if you're making lots of money it can be very problematic.

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.

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.

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.

I quite like it to be risky. I'm not ready to sit down in a chair with my name on it yet. I've arrived at that point in the art world where there really is a chair that you sit in.

For me, art is always a kind of theater. When I started the spot paintings I made them as an endless series. But I was never serious about it being an endless series. It was just an implied endless series. The theater means you just have to make it look good for that moment in the spotlight.

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 love art. It is uplifting.

The answer to how to live is to stop thinking about it.

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...

You can always tell a great painting, because when you get close there are all these nervous marks.

But then architects don't build their own houses.

You've got to be able to copy things faithfully before you can deviate.

I mean, people listen to music, and they like that, but I think in England, a lot of people don't like contemporary art.

Commercials are so contemporary and up to date that when you're involved in that visual world, you can't really go backwards.

I have titles floating around in my head; I have sculptures floating around in my head. It's like a collage.

It's ridiculous what I do. I can't believe in it - but I have to.

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 liked The Beatles a lot when I was growing up.

I don't think I'd want my pet in formaldehyde, but I guess in America they would.

I don't really have a career plan.

You have to step over the boundaries sometimes just to find out where theyare.