Top 78 Christo's Quotes
#1. This usually happens in the white-collar classes: These people take to worshipping pointlessness. Examples are Twin Peaks, Christo's artwork, and academic liberal politics. But a strange thing happens; these people view their ultra pointlessness as a way of being like God.
Noah Cicero
#2. Communicate with intelligence by saying what you mean without saying it in a mean way.
Jordy Christo
#3. We'd held each other before, on lazy summer days, between private kisses and languid touches, but never anything that I would have considered a true hug: selfless support not instigated by desire, comfort for comfort's sake. This was different.
Rose Christo
#4. We are probably the only artists in the world who have a 2,000-page book on a work of art that doesn't exist. But in this way, these projects reveal their identity through this whole process. When I'm starting, I only have the slightest idea of how the work of art will exist.
Christo
#5. We don't sell technical drawings except when they are incorporated into a drawing or a collage.
Christo
#6. The only place where people in Manhattan walk for leisure is in the park.
Christo
#7. If some of our works are symphonies, then wrapped walkways was chamber music.
Christo
#8. In 1964, when we first arrived in New York City, I remember vividly seeing the skyline of Manhattan, and our first proposal of 1964 was to wrap two lower Manhattan buildings. We never got permission.
Christo
#9. This is how you know somebody loves you. When you can't tie your own shoes and they don't mind tying them for you.
Rose Christo
#10. Now, there is no way to say how long some projects take, that's our principle.
Christo
#11. Julius Caesar burned down a library?" I asked. "Fucker.
Rose Christo
#12. But the drawings are not created only to be sold.
Christo
#13. I want you. I want you so much. I think I want you more than anything and that scares me, sometimes.
Rose Christo
#14. I kissed him like he was air and I couldn't breathe.
Rose Christo
#15. We never work on only one project because we never know if we will get permission for a project. So, for 'Over the River,' we started in 1992. I was just finishing 'The Umbrellas' in Japan and California, and I was also working on getting permission to wrap the Reichstag.
Christo
#16. People think our work is monumental because it's art, but human beings do much bigger things: they build giant airports, highways for thousands of miles, much, much bigger than what we create.
Christo
#17. Children are remarkably cruel in their candor. In their cruelty, they are innocent
Rose Christo
#18. Therefore, when we arrive in a place and talk to new people about a new image, it is very hard for them to visualize it. That's where the drawings are very important, because at least we can show a projection of what we believe it will look like.
Christo
#19. I don't know how your dad could have left you alone, anyway," Rafael said indignantly. "It's obvious you're the coolest person on the planet.
Rose Christo
#21. Therefore we have to go over the fact that all human beings are afraid by what is new. It is our work to convince them that they will enjoy it, and even if they don't, to allow us just for 14 days to create that work of art.
Christo
#22. But then even if my atoms were a sin, so what? It was like Dad had said. As far as sins went, the sin of loving another human being made for a pretty damn excellent one.
Rose Christo
#24. Some dumbass outside the reserve thinks you're wearing a butterfly on your arm, you'll get your ass kicked, Rafael said.
Rose Christo
#25. Now, to describe the process of the Wrapped Reichstag, which went from 1971 to '95, there is an entire book about that, because each one of our projects has its own book. The book is not an art book, meaning it's not written by an art historian.
Christo
#26. If we can die at any minute," I said, "why are you wasting your life dreading it? Why don't you just live while you have the chance?
Rose Christo
#27. All our projects are like fabulous expeditions. The story of each project is unique. Our projects have no precedent.
Christo
#28. What?" he said. "You let me draw all over your arm in permanent ink, but I hand you a vegetable and you chicken out?
Rose Christo
#29. You see, we are not machines and we do not have lots of ideas in a drawer.
Christo
#30. Maybe things don't really happen for a reason," Kenneth said. "Or maybe they do. But I think it doesn't matter either way. Because we can only experience those things as humans. And because we're humans, we're going to think they mean one thing, even if they mean another.
Rose Christo
#32. Some of the projects we've proposed over the years have been refused. But we never do other people's ideas; our ideas come out of our two hearts and our two heads.
Christo
#33. Each person is just an imprint of the many people who have crossed paths with us over the years, some more than others. Most of us never think to say thank you. I know I never had.
Rose Christo
#34. Every artist in the world likes his or her work to make people think.
Christo
#35. You can't change the past, you know? You can't change who you were, but you can change who you're going to be.
Rose Christo
#36. And the most unusual and surrealistic place in New York City is Central Park.
Christo
#37. Relieved and overjoyed, I felt kind of like a five-year-old, too. I felt like a lamb that's found its way home again, or the small child each of us secretly hides at heart.
Rose Christo
#38. Often the art in New York is related to the buildings, to grandiose things.
Christo
#39. The work of art is a scream of freedom.
Christo
#40. And for me, the real world involves everything: risk, danger, beauty, energy, all we meet with in the real world.
Christo
#42. I don't know what you're talking about. I just like animals," Rafael said. "So does Sky, except he's kind of a hippie soulbonder about it.
Rose Christo
#43. But now, today, we don't know if Over the River is truly the next project to be realized, because something very nice happened to our life in November in New York.
Christo
#44. You're not ugly. Sky, you're
You know when you first came to the reservation, and everyone was like, 'Holy crap, it's a white boy'? My thoughts were more like, 'Holy crap, why can't I stop looking at him?' And it wasn't because you were ugly.
Rose Christo
#45. I do a lot of work that's permanent. The drawings, the sculptures, they're permanent.
Christo
#46. It's very important to understand that we never do the same thing twice; each of our projects is unique. We'll never do another 'Gates.' Each project is a unique image. We do not know in advance how the work will look. I do preparatory drawings, but they are only projections of our vision.
Christo
#47. Germany is an economic giant but a political midget, and with the end of the Cold War she has started to muscle her presence throughout Europe and the world.
Christo
#48. Hope for the best," I said. "Prepare for the worst.
Rose Christo
#49. I escaped from my home country, Bulgaria, to Czechoslovakia and then to the West.
Christo
#50. You can't change who you are, can you? That would require changing the people who made you along the way. That would mean discrediting everything they ever gave you.
Rose Christo
#51. In 1964, Jeanne-Claude and I became illegal aliens. That's when we moved here from Paris. And for three years, we were illegal aliens living in an illegal building. At that time, some artists started to move to SoHo, and they put A.I.R. - artists-in-residence - up on their windows.
Christo
#52. Nor had I realized until that moment how much of a group project it was to grow up.
Rose Christo
#53. We wish to work in total freedom.
Christo
#54. I don't understand the idea that people shouldn't care about each other just because they're strangers. I think that kind of mindset is responsible for most of the world's problems.
Rose Christo
#55. It is not only one person's work, it's really a partnership and collaboration during all these years.
Christo
#56. We tell them that we believe it will be beautiful because that is our specialty, we only create joy and beauty. We have never done a sad work. Through the drawings, we hope a majority will be able to visualize it.
Christo
#57. The other work we started in 1992, it is called Over the River, Project for the Arkansas River in the state of Colorado, we haven't got the permit yet. And, we are working at both of those, trying to get the permit. Therefore, we do not know which one will be realized next.
Christo
#58. I picked up my flute and smiled, eyebrows dancing. "Why don't you show her your straight dance?"
"Is there a gay dance, too?" Mickey asked.
Rose Christo
#59. It appears to be monumental only because it's art.
Christo
#60. I was shaking when our lips parted and he leaned his forehead against mine, his fingers carding through my hair, my hands on his face.
"I won't let them," Rafael said. "I won't let anyone take you away. I'll protect you. I'll always protect you. I don't care how. I just will.
Rose Christo
#61. It's not blood that makes us who we are," Dad said. "It's family. And it's not blood that makes us family. It's love.
Rose Christo
#62. It struck me as kind of crazy, kind of amazing, that one person could make me feel so serene just by being.
Rose Christo
#63. Do not regret the things you didn't do," Tamika said. "If you're going to regret something, it has to be the things you have done. We are not made up of the inverse of our experiences. If we were what we didn't do, I would be a ballerina.
Rose Christo
#64. I don't like this, Toua," I go on. "We're like birds that have flown a very long way from their nest. We're like nettles in a garden full of hops. We shouldn't have to hide who we are. Our faces are unseen.
Rose Christo
#65. The decision to use only the name Christo was made deliberately when we were young because it is difficult for one artist to get established and we wanted to put all the chances on our side.
Christo
#66. That could stay, not forever, because we believe that nothing exists that is forever, not even the dinosaurs, but if well maintained, it could remain for four to five thousand years. And that is definitely not forever.
Christo
#67. Coldness settles again in my stomach. I do not want a nice Hmong girl. I want a nice Egyptian boy who teaches me about colors and makes me appreciate poetry. I want the nice Egyptian boy who stops in the middle of the day to say Thank you, God. For everything.
Rose Christo
#68. We have created indoor installations inside museums, like the Wrapped Floor at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 1968, and not monumental at all by any standards.
Christo
#69. Sometimes an adventure is a mundane thing. A trip to the shore with your best friend. Learning you can laugh in unearthly ways.
Rose Christo
#70. Because we do not sell photographs, we have no royalties on books, posters, postcards.
Christo
#71. Our work is a scream of freedom.
Christo
#72. And for every project, because it takes years, you can see the early drawings and collages as just a simple, vague idea, and through the years and through the negotiations of getting the permit, you see that every detail is now clarified.
Christo
#73. To keep that absolute freedom we cannot be obliged to anyone.
Christo
#74. The other exception where we did not at all restore the place to its original condition is the Surrounded Islands. Before we installed our fabric, we had our workers remove 42 tons of garbage off the beaches of those islands. We never brought the garbage back.
Christo
#75. The freedom of every artist is essential.
Christo
#76. You ought to sue."
"I don't know how to sew. I tried it once and I almost put my eye out."
If there is one thing Sahara Soto and Kerry Thompson have in common, it's their complete idiocy. In the girl's case, it's endearing.
Rose Christo
#77. We'd better go," I say. "It's time for you to make Hmong babies."
Toua pulls free from my grasp. "You little
"
"Go. Further the great Flower Clan. The mountainous homeland will sing from your victorious loins."
"You're disgusting!
Rose Christo
#78. He swore loudly, confused. I won't repeat the word here. I'm a gentleman.
Rose Christo
