Marina Abramovic Quotes

The public is in need of experiences that are not just voyeuristic. Our society is in a mess of losing its spiritual centre.

Why not do something strange and different for once? Artists can do whatever they want!

I had so much fear of blood, and the first thing I did was to cut myself to see what happens. That's the only way to rebuild yourself.

An artist should not fall in love with another artist.

People put so much effort into starting a relationship and so little effort into ending one.

I am very clear that I am not a feminist. It puts you into a category and I don't like that.

If you are really true to yourself and really follow your intuition in the most rigorous way, there is a moment that becomes universal, that reaches everybody. That’s the real magic of Björk-she teaches us the courage to be ourselves.

I think if people raise their consciousness and find a purpose, everybody will be helped.

We are always in the space in-between... all the spaces where you are not actually at home. You haven't arrived yet.... This is where our mind is the most open. We are alert, we are sensitive, and destiny can happen. We do not have any barriers and we are vulnerable. Vulnerability is important. It means we are completely alive and this is an extremely important space. This is for me the space from which my work generates.

Talking about performance is such a strange thing because it's so immaterial. We are talking about soft matter. We are talking about something that is invisible. You can't see it. You can't touch it. You just can feel it.

I believe that life is shorter; that is why we have to make experience longer.

My mother and father had a terrible marriage. They celebrated their wedding anniversary one year with their friends. Why did they celebrate? Maybe because they had lasted so many years without killing each other.

My new work deals with emptying my body: 'Boat emptying, stream entering.' This means that you have to empty the body/boat to the point where you can really be connected with the fields of energy around you. I think that men and women in our Western culture are completely disconnected from that energy, and in my new work I want to make this connection possible.

I'm interested in utopian communities of the past. Many of them didn't survive and I'm examining closely the reasons they failed.

The most revolutionary ideas are not sellable, but only mind-changing.

When you're 50, the best thing to do is dance the Argentinean tango.

We are actually living in a million parallel realities every single minute.

I serve like a bridge. I go to other cultures, learn, put myself in different situations and learn as much as I can, and then go to Western cultures to give. I'm doing this bridging all the time.

Americans don't like European movies.

If you're a baker, making bread, you're a baker. If you make the best bread in the world, you're not an artist, but if you bake the bread in the gallery, you're an artist. So the context makes the difference.

Every party is the same, too many people, too little food, and you have to wait around. I'm extremely bored with parties.

I am only interested in the ideas that become obsessive and make me feel uneasy. The ideas that I'm afraid of.

It was incredible, Lady Gaga came to see the piece. She didn't sit with me, but it was all atwitter. Every single kid from 12 to 18 ran to see Lady Gaga and then Lady Gaga left and they stayed. And they stayed another day another day and it created a completely different culture, a different audience that I never had before.

Zooming in, zooming out. I was shocked. I said, "Let's erase this right now, put the camera behind the stage and I'll do the performance just for the camera." He set up everything and I told him to go outside and smoke a cigarette. Come back when I finish. Don't touch the camera. This was the way how I've done most everything after that.

Typically, the performance has a story - a beginning, the crescendo and the end.

In my work I have complete control, but about my life, I don't want to.

I always sent my mother all these huge books I made. When my mother died, I was cleaning her cupboard, and these big books were only 20 pages long. She edited out, maybe burned, every single photograph where I'm naked.

When I was 14, I thought I looked terrible. I wore these typical Slavic shoes with metal bottoms so you could always hear me coming and this really ugly princess skirt and blouse with the top button closed. I had a boy haircut, a baby face covered with pimples, and a really big nose.

I had to leave some traces. In the beginning, I would give complete instructions to the photographer. In the '70s, people would come to photograph your work and you would just end up with this crazy material that had nothing to do with your work; maybe I'd pick up two or three photographs that were the closest to the idea. This is why when you look at the '70s, you see much less documentation and really bad material. The material will become misleading to what the piece was.

You create a friendship on a level that you've never done before. The basic kind of experience is to basically give love to total strangers all the time, and that really changed everything in me. And this piece transformed me more than any other one before. I saw my entire life differently. What do I have to do? What is my passion on this planet? I'm much more focused than I ever was before.

Talking about [Donald] Trump, there's nothing wrong with Trump. He's who he is. It's wrong with us, who let him [win]. That's what's wrong. It's not that he's going to change, but the people who think like him.

When I was young, I couldn't think about ballet because I had to focus on my own field. But once you secure your own performance area, you can indulge yourself in different territories. Fashion is one. And ballet is absolutely a fantasy, because it deals with the bodies in a different way.

People ask why there are so few female artists who succeed. It's because women are not ready to sacrifice as much as men. Women want a man, they want a family, they want to have children, they want to be loved, and to be an artist. And they can't; it's impossible.

The world doesn't need an artist who shows reality as it is

Galás is a great artist with a very powerful voice.

My memoirs are full of humor, I had to change jokes because it was a little too dark.

True love for whatever you are doing is the answer to everything.

To control the breathing is to control the mind. With different patterns of breathing, you can fall in love, you can hate someone, you can feel the whole spectrum of feelings just by changing your breathing.

I hate studio. For me, studio is a trap to overproduce and repeat yourself. It is a habit that leads to art pollution.

First of all, to do performance art, you really have to give 100 percent. I only know that I have to give 100 percent and then what happens, happens.

You know I very much respect Yvonne Rainer, she is very important - in American dance, the entire development of modern dance, and creating a wonderful physical language.

I realise the power of art that does not hang on the walls of galleries.

I always do big birthday things. In three years, I'm 70. I'm going to do something outrageous. In America, everyone's always hiding their age.

There's nothing more tragic than artists from the 70s still doing art from the 70s.

If you're a woman, it's almost impossible to establish a relationship. You're too much for everybody. It's too much. The woman always has to play this role of being fragile and dependent. And if you're not, they're fascinated by you, but only for a little while. And then they want to change you and crush you. And then they leave.

Art comes from life, not from the studio

You see, what is my purpose of performance artist is to stage certain difficulties and stage the fear the primordial fear of pain, of dying, all of which we have in our lives, and then stage them in front of audience and go through them and tell the audience, I'm your mirror; if I can do this in my life, you can do it in yours.

All my inspiration comes from life. That's how it never stops, in a way.