Marina Abramovic Quotes

The only thing I have learned is to find strength in yourself. No one can help you, no one can do anything for you, you have to do the work yourself.

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.

What you get is the opening of your mind. I'm not preaching any new religion; I'm ritualizing everyday activities. You drink the water. You count the rice. You sit in Crystal Cave. You lie in Levitation Chamber. You push yourself to a new level.

We don't have politicians with dignity and morals. We never have, not since [Nelson] Mandela and [Mahatma ] Gandhi. It's really rare.

There has been evolution in my work. In the beginning I was very much busy with the physical body and the limits of the physical body but that somehow naturally led me to the mental body and how I could deal with that. Stillness is so much harder, especially for three months. It was a big challenge. As a performer it is the most difficult experience one can have. And the interactive experience with the public made it even harder.

In every culture, [there are those] shamans or medicine men who endured incredible physical pain, because it's a door opening to the subconsciousness. And the way we can actually control the pain -- it's how to control everything. This is the key.

The body has an enormous power of healing, if you really believe you are going to be healed, you're going to be healed. If you really believe you're going to die, you're going to die. If you apply this kind of method to everything, then there is hope.

Most people are more comfortable with what is familiar. I’ve spent my life doing the opposite.

Today, our attention is less than the television advertisement. We're looking at six or seven problems constantly. We're living in the disturbed societies of cities. I think modern technology is one of the worst things human beings have invented.

Immaterial art is the strongest because there's no obstacle; there's just energy, and I believe in energy.

From the moment you are born, you could die. I think as an artist it is important to meditate on that.

Through performance, I found the possibility of establishing a dialogue with the audience through an exchange of energy, which tended to transform the energy itself. I could not produce a single work without the presence of the audience, because the audience gave me the energy to be able, through a specific action, to assimilate it and return it, to create a genuine field of energy.

We wanted to prove that I am not just a provocateur, as the television said [referring to a Fox news clip shown in the film]. It's challenging, but it's not just challenging.

The experience I learned was that … if you leave decision to the public, you can be killed… I felt really violated: they cut my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the public. Everyone ran away, escaping an actual confrontation.

Dali Lama said, 'when you open the heart of the person with humor, you can tell him the most truth. But if you tell him truth without humor, the heart closes.'

Documentation is misleading, because the performance is dead. So the very early works were not documented at all.

I just want to create situations where people forget time.

You know, everyone is always talking about plastic surgery, or the technology, what to do. I really think it's important to help yourself with the technology if you want to feel better, but I am absolutely against any kind of monstrous cuts of the body, lifting that is beyond recognition, this kind of stuff.