Damien Hirst Quotes

Never let money get in the way of an idea

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

I think an ashtray is the most fantastically real thing.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Artists are like everybody else.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

As soon as something becomes art I think you get over the fear

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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 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.

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.