Marina Abramovic Quotes
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Americans don't like European movies.
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Artists should never think of themselves as an idol. Fame is a side effect of one's work.
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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. It was rainy. It was all wrong. And I was thinking, 'God, she loved life so much.'
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In my work I have complete control, but about my life, I don't want to.
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The mind is crazy thing. To be focused is the most difficult thing.
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I am not a therapist. I am not a spiritual leader. These elements are in the art: it is therapeutic, spiritual, social and political - everything. It has many layers. But art has to have many layers. If it doesn't, then forget it.
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People have so much pain inside them that they're not even aware of.
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I really don't like art where you need to know so much theory to understand. If the theory is removed, it doesn't do anything. That means that this work is an illustration of theory, and I don't believe in the power of the work itself.
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To really change the way society thinks, you have to give your entire being to it until there's nothing left.
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I don't know anything about the afterlife because I haven't been there yet.
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I don't do husbands. I don't do children.
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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.
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It's very important that young artists push boundaries, because sometimes you have this urge to do something - like the impulsive and dangerous urges I had as a child - and if you don't follow through with it you might miss out on a developmental experience.
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Happiness comes from the full understanding of your own being.
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I am obsessive always, even as a child. On one side is this strict orthodox religion, on the other is communism, and I am this little girl pulled between the two. It makes me who I am. It turns me into the kind of person that Freud would have a field day with, for sure.
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All my inspiration comes from life. That's how it never stops, in a way.
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You can't choreograph death, but you can choreograph your funeral.
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The public is in need of experiences that are not just voyeuristic. Our society is in a mess of losing its spiritual centre.
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Performance is there, and if you are not there in that moment it happened, it just stays in the memory. It's so immaterial and something this immaterial is very difficult to collect. Its difficult to buy, its how we can buy immaterial art.
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For me, performance is a holy ground. When I perform, I really step into a different state of consciousness.
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Performance has to be mainstream art. This is what I'm fighting for.
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I hate studio. For me, studio is a trap to overproduce and repeat yourself. It is a habit that leads to art pollution.
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I am only interested in the ideas that become obsessive and make me feel uneasy. The ideas that I'm afraid of.
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We always project into the future or reflect in the past, but we are so little in the present.