Damien Hirst Quotes

When you've just done it, you're not sure. But when you've sat with it for a couple of hours and you don't want to do anything more to it, that's a great feeling. It can stand on its own two feet.

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.

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.

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.

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

I'm a hypocrite and a slut and I'll change my mind tomorrow.

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.

The idea is more important than the object.

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

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.

The infinite possibilities. That's what used to do my nut in.

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

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.

I always feel a bit trapped when a painting goes for millions of pounds and only one person can have it. If you can have that as well as a poster on every student's wall, then you're in a very enviable position. I'd like to do a Damien Hirst for £500 at some point.

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 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.

I just hope that I can be kind of like the Beatles. I really like that kind of model. I like the way that without losing integrity they could change through fashion and not look back at the '60s and vomit when they saw what they'd done.

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.

The best spot painting you can have by me is one painted by Rachel.

But then architects don't build their own houses.

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

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 don't really have a career plan.

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

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.

Art comes from everywhere. It's your response to your surroundings.

Here's one from me: 'You have to be aware that everyone else is thinking far too hard about themselves to be thinking about you, whoever you are.' If you want it, you can have it. Once you know that, you can be free.

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.

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

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'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.

If the choice is between buying another building or a Pollock, I'd go for the Pollock every time.

Art is the closest you can get to immortality, though it's a poor substitute - you're working for people not yet born - and people want it because it is brilliant. It ends up in museums anyway; the rich have to give it back to the people, it's their only option. There are no pockets in a shroud.

But I always liked the fact that you get these totally unacceptable images, but they're taken by a really expensive photographer, with great light, and in terms of the quality of the photograph it's a great photograph, but in terms of imagery it's unacceptable, and I like that contradiction.

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?

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

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.

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 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.

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.

To be an artist is not about fame; it's about art, which is this intangible thing that has got to have lots of integrity, whereas being famous doesn't really take any integrity. But I think you have to admit that you want to be famous, otherwise you can't be an artist. Art and fame together are like a desire to live forever.

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

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 like the confusion you get between science and religion ... that's where belief lies and art as well.

I love color. I feel it inside me. It gives me a buzz.

I think as an artist you have to reinvent yourself every day.

I believe all painting and art should be uplifting for the viewer.

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.

As an artist you're looking for universal triggers. You want it both ways. You want it to have an immediate impact, and you want it to have deep meanings as well. I'm striving for both. But I hate it when people write things that sound like they've swallowed a f ... dictionary.

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

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

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.

You need a big ego to be an artist.

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.

Never let money get in the way of an idea

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

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 don't see what else you can spend your money on ... If you want to own things, art is a pretty good bet.

You've really got to get down on the floor with yourself and get low in order to make great art. I think you've just got to accept who you are and do the most unbelievable things.

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

I can't wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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 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.

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 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 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.

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 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.

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.

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.

Sometimes when you're drunk you can see better.

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

I sometimes feel that I have nothing to say and I want to communicate this.

I liked The Beatles a lot when I was growing up.

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.

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

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!

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

Artists are like everybody else.

I can't understand why most people believe in medicine and don't believe in art, without questioning either.

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

I made one untitled piece.