Top 100 Damien Hirst Quotes
#1. I've had laser eye surgery and I don't wear glasses any more, so people just go, 'You're not Damien Hirst.' I don't get recognized on the street.
Damien Hirst
#2. But for me, from my point of view, I don't mind if it falls over ... if you break the glass you replace the glass, if the sheep falls out you can always get a new sheep.
Damien Hirst
#3. Being best is a false goal, you have to measure success on your own terms.
Damien Hirst
#4. 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.
Damien Hirst
#5. I like the confusion you get between science and religion ... that's where belief lies and art as well.
Damien Hirst
#6. 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.
Damien Hirst
#7. I've been asked to do a retrospective since I was about 28 and I always thought that was a bit odd. It's great to look forward as an artist because in the future the possibilities are infinite; you look back and it's all fixed so it's a scary thing.
Damien Hirst
#8. As an artist you're looking for universal triggers. You want it both ways. You want it to have an immediate impact, and you want it to have deep meanings as well. I'm striving for both. But I hate it when people write things that sound like they've swallowed a f ... dictionary.
Damien Hirst
#9. 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.
Damien Hirst
#10. 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.
Damien Hirst
#12. I liked The Beatles a lot when I was growing up.
Damien Hirst
#13. 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.
Damien Hirst
#14. The difference between art about death and actual death is that one's a celebration and the other's a dull fact.
Damien Hirst
#15. 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.
Damien Hirst
#16. A painting probably is the most shocking increase in value, from what it costs to make to what you sell it for.
Damien Hirst
#17. I used to believe I was going to live forever. And then you suddenly become aware that you're not.
Damien Hirst
#18. No, I don't believe in genius. I believe in freedom. I think anyone can do it. Anyone can be like Rembrandt.
Damien Hirst
#19. My Mum brought me up to believe that if you look after the pennies then the pounds look after themselves, and I could never do it.
Damien Hirst
#21. I wanted a shark that's big enough to eat you, and in a large enough amount of liquid so that you could imagine you were in there with it.
Damien Hirst
#23. People always say that my work is sensational or shocking but there are truly shocking things you could do, and my sculptures don't go anywhere near that.
Damien Hirst
#24. The best spot painting you can have by me is one painted by Rachel.
Damien Hirst
#25. 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.
Damien Hirst
#26. I just hope that I can be kind of like the Beatles. I really like that kind of model. I like the way that without losing integrity they could change through fashion and not look back at the '60s and vomit when they saw what they'd done.
Damien Hirst
#27. 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.
Damien Hirst
#28. 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.
Damien Hirst
#29. That's the great thing about art. Anybody can do it if you just believe. With practice, you can make great paintings.
Damien Hirst
#30. I love color. I feel it inside me. It gives me a buzz.
Damien Hirst
#31. I'm 43. I'm not ready to sit down in a chair with my name on it yet.
Damien Hirst
#32. It'd be nice to make lots of money but it's quite difficult, because every time I make lots of money I make a bigger piece that costs lots of money.
Damien Hirst
#33. I always feel like the art's there and I just see it, so it's not really a lot of work.
Damien Hirst
#34. 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.
Damien Hirst
#35. I think I like big issues, but I don't believe in God or religion.
Damien Hirst
#36. There's no possible way you can get what you want.
Damien Hirst
#37. You've got to be able to copy things faithfully before you can deviate.
Damien Hirst
#38. If the choice is between buying another building or a Pollock, I'd go for the Pollock every time.
Damien Hirst
#39. 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.
Damien Hirst
#40. The idea of being a painter, I've always thought, is better than being an artist or a sculptor.
Damien Hirst
#41. You have to step over the boundaries sometimes just to find out where theyare.
Damien Hirst
#43. But then architects don't build their own houses.
Damien Hirst
#44. It's ridiculous what I do. I can't believe in it - but I have to.
Damien Hirst
#45. It's very easy to say, 'I could have done that,' after someone's done it. But I did it. You didn't. It didn't exist until I did it.
Damien Hirst
#46. I can't understand why most people believe in medicine and don't believe in art, without questioning either.
Damien Hirst
#48. I just do what everybody asks me to do, in terms of media and stuff.
Damien Hirst
#50. Commercials are so contemporary and up to date that when you're involved in that visual world, you can't really go backwards.
Damien Hirst
#51. Picasso, Michelangelo, possibly, might be verging on genius, but I don't think a painter like Rembrandt is a genius.
Damien Hirst
#52. I believe all painting and art should be uplifting for the viewer.
Damien Hirst
#53. I gave up painting by 16. I secretly thought I would have been Rembrandt by then.
Damien Hirst
#54. Because it's visual art, a lot of it comes from childhood experience but then a lot comes from the visual language - in advertising and stuff like that - which is around us.
Damien Hirst
#55. Immortality is really desirable, I guess. In terms of images, anyway.
Damien Hirst
#56. The spot paintings, the spin paintings, they're all a mechanical way to avoid the actual guy in a room, myself, with a blank canvas.
Damien Hirst
#57. I'm a hypocrite and a slut and I'll change my mind tomorrow.
Damien Hirst
#58. 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.
Damien Hirst
#59. 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.
Damien Hirst
#60. In an artwork you're always looking for artistic decisions, so an ashtray is perfect. An ashtray has got life and death.
Damien Hirst
#61. 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.
Damien Hirst
#62. 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.
Damien Hirst
#63. I think as an artist you have to reinvent yourself every day.
Damien Hirst
#64. Even as a kid in drawing class, I had real ambition. I wanted to be the best in the class, but there was always some other feller who was better; so I thought, 'It can't be about being the best, it has to be about the drawing itself, what you do with it.' That's kind of stuck with me.
Damien Hirst
#65. Art goes on in your head. If you said something interesting, that might be a title for a work of art and I'd write it down.
Damien Hirst
#66. The idea is more important than the object.
Damien Hirst
#67. Museums are for dead artists. I'd never show my work in the Tate. You'd never get me in that place.
Damien Hirst
#68. Kids are naturally gifted at art from a very young age. The problem is when they get older and become self-conscious. The process should always be fun, though.
Damien Hirst
#69. I was taught to confront things you can't avoid. Death is one of those things. To live in a society where you're trying not to look at it is stupid because looking at death throws us back into life with more vigour and energy. The fact that flowers don't last for ever makes them beautiful.
Damien Hirst
#70. I have titles floating around in my head; I have sculptures floating around in my head. It's like a collage.
Damien Hirst
#71. It's amazing what you can do with an E in A-Level art, a twisted imagination and a chainsaw.
Damien Hirst
#73. 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
Damien Hirst
#74. The idea of going on tour for the rest of my life with old works is not that exciting. As an artist I definitely think the work in future is going to be better than the work in the past, otherwise why do it?
Damien Hirst
#75. 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.
Damien Hirst
#76. 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.
Damien Hirst
#77. 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.
Damien Hirst
#78. I don't see what else you can spend your money on ... If you want to own things, art is a pretty good bet.
Damien Hirst
#79. 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.
Damien Hirst
#80. But I could never make a judgement that something was obscene.
Damien Hirst
#81. 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.
Damien Hirst
#82. I did a butterfly show in Berlin, and we had a guy who's an expert on butterflies; who bred them all and who looks after them all in the space.
Damien Hirst
#83. 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.
Damien Hirst
#84. I can't wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it.
Damien Hirst
#85. I think an ashtray is the most fantastically real thing.
Damien Hirst
#86. People don't like contemporary art, but all art starts life as contemporary - I can't really see a difference.
Damien Hirst
#87. As soon as something becomes art I think you get over the fear
Damien Hirst
#88. So smoking is the perfect way to commit suicide without actually dying. I smoke because it's bad, it's really simple.
Damien Hirst
#89. As an artist, you don't stop making art because people are not buying it.
Damien Hirst
#90. 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.
Damien Hirst
#91. What I really like is minimum effort for maximum effect.
Damien Hirst
#92. It's such a crass idea - you're either in love or out of love.
Damien Hirst
#93. As a father, I would say I am more like a mother. I do a lot of hugging.
Damien Hirst
#94. 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.
Damien Hirst
#95. 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.
Damien Hirst
#96. Buy art, build a museum, put your name on it, let people in for free. That's as close as you can get to immortality ...
Damien Hirst
#97. Sensation is an element of what I do, and why not? It's not sensational for the sake of being sensational, but it's sensational art ... It's like touching skin.
Damien Hirst
#98. You can always tell a great painting, because when you get close there are all these nervous marks.
Damien Hirst
#99. I think money is important for everyone, because the lack of it is so painful.
Damien Hirst
#100. I don't think I'd want my pet in formaldehyde, but I guess in America they would.
Damien Hirst
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