Damien Hirst Quotes
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In an artwork you're always looking for artistic decisions, so an ashtray is perfect. An ashtray has got life and death.
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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.
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I gave up painting by 16. I secretly thought I would have been Rembrandt by then.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Museums are for dead artists. I'd never show my work in the Tate. You'd never get me in that place.
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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.
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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.
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You need a big ego to be an artist.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Artists are like everybody else.
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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.
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For me, art is always a kind of theater.
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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.
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That's the great thing about art. Anybody can do it if you just believe. With practice, you can make great paintings.
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I think I like big issues, but I don't believe in God or religion.
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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.
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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.
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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!