Damien's Quotes

#1. Secrets, he'd said, and I shiver, afraid that Damien's going to have to face that darkness. But I'll be there when he does, and we'll face the darkness together."
"I can. Because when Damien's beside me, I'm no longer afraid of the dark.

J. Kenner

#2. With Damien's back bared before him, he could now see the subtle stamp of scars under the kirin, a lifetime of pain drowned beneath ink and determination.

Rhys Ford

#3. And so I struggle against my bonds, not because I want to get free, not even because I want the pain. I want what it represents. That I am Damien's. Bound to him. Marked by him. Claimed by him.

J. Kenner

#4. When art is defined by Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, you've got a society that's impoverished.

Robert Adams

#5. Practicing is not normally fun. Sometimes people say they're practicing, but they're really just enjoying themselves and the instrument. That's not real practice.

Damien Chazelle

#6. 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

#7. C'mon, Alec," Damien said. "Sung just wants us to win." "No," I said. "Sung only wants us to win. There's a difference." Damien and the others looked at me blankly. This was not, I remembered, a word-choice crowd.

Holly Black

#8. You let him go alone? (Kat)
Well, given the fact that it was in this time zone and there's a little thing outside called the sun ... yeah. Burnt-up Daimon wouldn't be helpful to nobody, least of all me and my tailor. (Damien)

Sherrilyn Kenyon

#9. You know when you've found it that's something I've learned, cause you feel it when they take it away.

Damien Rice

#10. Until the late 1970s there'd either be only black or white in the paintings or if there were colours it would be a small amount, not a large area, and with the color separated from other colors by black or white (which is formula for Damien Hirst's successful dot paintings, incidentally).

Matthew Collings

#11. There's something very particular about the kind of rage you feel when you're alone in a practice room by yourself, unable to master a simple thing like a rudiment.

Damien Chazelle

#12. 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

#13. When you've just done it, you're not sure. But when you've sat with it for a couple of hours and you don't want to do anything more to it, that's a great feeling. It can stand on its own two feet.

Damien Hirst

#14. It's easy to show terrible people's behavior on screen, and we all just kind of nod and go, 'Isn't that terrible.' It's more interesting when you can show terrible behavior in the interest of something good.

Damien Chazelle

#15. When I try to picture heaven, I see a place where it's always December, every radio station plays hair bands, and every time I check my pockets they're full of Hershey's Kisses. There's a Christmas parade on every street, every day is my birthday, and the sun always sets at 4:58 p.m.

Damien Echols

#16. What's great about musicals is their energy and go-for-brokeness - stopping the story to sing and dance. How can you not love that?

Damien Chazelle

#17. I like Damien Stark. He's not what I expected, but there's something compelling about him - and it's more than just the fact that he's hotter than sin and got me worked up into quite a lather. He seems perfectly comfortable in his own skin.

J. Kenner

#18. It's ridiculous what I do. I can't believe in it - but I have to.

Damien Hirst

#19. I think, especially living in L.A., it's very easy to get wrapped up in weekend announcements and the trades and the whole social life of the city, and to get divorced from what actually matters.

Damien Chazelle

#20. I find L.A. kind of romantic, actually. As a movie junkie, it's a city that was built by the movies. There's something really weird and surreal about it that I find energizing.

Damien Chazelle

#21. I fuck sweetheart, and that's all I do. It means nothing when I do it. I find girls who want to do what I like to do, and I spend myself in them. When I'm done, I leave. You don't want that, and you and I both know it.

Ella Fox

#22. I had a passport where I wrote 'artist' under 'occupation' and I remember thinking, 'That's it, it's proved!'

Damien Hirst

#23. 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

#24. There's no possible way you can get what you want.

Damien Hirst

#25. But I always liked the fact that you get these totally unacceptable images, but they're taken by a really expensive photographer, with great light, and in terms of the quality of the photograph it's a great photograph, but in terms of imagery it's unacceptable, and I like that contradiction.

Damien Hirst

#26. It's not hard to grow when you know that you just don't know.

Damien Rice

#27. But it's like the horror of being in a studio with a blank canvas. I used to always run out of ideas because there are so many possibilities and I would just think, well what am I going to do now!

Damien Hirst

#28. Damien Hirst is acceptable because he's a brand. It's like buying a Porche. Hardline conservatives will never accept it, others think it's a massive waste of money but most will just shrug and move on

Qatar Cultural Official

#29. 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

#30. 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

#31. 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

#32. Being able to walk out of the studio after a week of intense recording and jump into a cold sea and sit in a hot spring and soak for a few hours completely resets the whole system. Really refreshing. For me, it's all about stepping out of the ordinary. Even psychically.

Damien Rice

#33. 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

#34. 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

#35. I definitely want to work with Thom Yorke. I want to work with Damien Marley; there's a few international artists I wouldn't mind working with - like Massacre Children would be ill, and I still have an affinity for the U.K. hip hop scene.

Lupe Fiasco

#36. I've always, especially through old Hollywood musicals, loved just to watch tap dancing; I adore it. I think it's fantastic.

Damien Chazelle

#37. People like Art Blakey and Buddy Rich, you look at them playing music, and it's just like looking at a heavy metal drummer. I mean, they're playing with the same amount of ferocity. It's not to say all jazz is like that.

Damien Chazelle

#38. I feel no disgust when I hear the confessions of those near their end, whose wounds are full of maggots ... This may give you some idea of my daily work. Picture to yourself a collection of huts with 800 Lepers. No doctor; in fact, as there is no cure, there seems no place for a doctor's skill.

Father Damien

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

Damien Hirst

#40. 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

#41. I have titles floating around in my head; I have sculptures floating around in my head. It's like a collage.

Damien Hirst

#42. There was no safe place in all the world for me. My stomach was filled with ice water. Hearing Domini was the final straw. Something in me broke. All the King's horses and all the King's men would never be able to put me back together again.

Damien Echols

#43. I was really trying to sell to people who hate jazz: to make a case for the art form as youthful and energetic, not the sort of rarified intellectual activity it's painted as.

Damien Chazelle

#44. What I love about jazz is that it's full of legends, full of myths. It's an oral history because it started in New Orleans and Kansas City, under the radar.

Damien Chazelle

#45. It's good to have a title that's not just one word. If you're gonna title it, you might as well try and say something.

Damien Hirst

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

Damien Hirst

#47. I think Damien Hirst is hilarious. And I think he's a true artist. He's not hilarious first; I think he is a real artist, and I also think he's got an amazing sense of humor.

Jemima Kirke

#48. 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

#49. Normally Halloween was like Christmas for me. I would anticipate it for weeks, decorating myself and the house, as well as strolling around the neighborhood, admiring everyone else's decorations. Nothing lifts my spirit like a scarecrow in the front yard.

Damien Echols

#50. Damien is Damien. When I don't put him in the squad my mother, who's 84, asks 'why isn't Damien playing?' She kills me about it and that's true

Claudio Ranieri

#51. 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

#52. 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

#53. I don't want you to have to handle it. That's the horror of my past. But you ... you're the reality of my present. You're the proof I survived. The prize in the cereal box.

J. Kenner

#54. 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

#55. Faith is nothing more than a watered-down attempt to accept someone else's insight as your own. Belief is the psychic equivalent of an article of second-hand clothing, worn out and passed down.

Damien Echols

#56. On the opposite wall was a Damien Hirst spot painting, bought by Arabella after a decent bonus season. Roger's considered view of the painting, looking at it from aesthetic, art-historical, interior-design, and psychological points of view, was that it had cost forty-seven thousand pounds, plus VAT.

John Lanchester

#57. 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

#58. ANDREW: But do you think there's a line? You know, where you discourage the next Charlie Parker from becoming Charlie Parker?
FLETCHER: No. Because the next Charlie Parker would never be discouraged.

Damien Chazelle

#59. The the glow become brighter: a holographic golden sickle with a few sheaves of wheat, rotating just above Meg McCaffrey.
A boy in the crowd gasped. 'She's a communist!'
A girl who'd been sitting at Cabin Four's table gave him a disgusted sneer. 'No, Damien, that's my mom's symbol.

Rick Riordan

#60. I'd love to interview Bill Clinton. I know that might be a little boring, but he's so interesting and such an amazing guy. All he's done after his presidency ... he hasn't just sat around, he's been so active in so many charitable causes.

Damien Fahey

#61. 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

#62. It's interesting when you wind up distilling all your ambitions and your goals and dreams into one single person. It's giving that person a lot of power.

Damien Chazelle

#63. If there's a good review, I'll skip over the headline, but I always find the bad reviews and read those. I don't know why. It's a little sick and demented.

Damien Chazelle

#64. I like the confusion you get between science and religion ... that's where belief lies and art as well.

Damien Hirst

#65. Death's just something that inspires me, not something that pulls me down. I used to get called morbid at school. I have always loved horror films; I like being frightened.

Damien Hirst

#66. It's certainly no coincidence that big bands became the entertainment of the army in WWI and WWII, and that jazz drumming style is very military influenced. The snare drum comes from the military and becomes the core kind of sound of jazz drums.

Damien Chazelle

#67. If you're an artist, you want to draw from real life; you want to draw from experiences, emotion, and it's something that a lot of musicians juggle with. I've always found it so fascinating.

Damien Chazelle

#68. It's a weird thing where, especially in jazz, you have to totally mention cutting sessions and people one-upping each other and people being super, super tough on each other. And out of it emerge these genius musicians.

Damien Chazelle

#69. But it's a poor church that cares only for what happens to a soul after it leaves this life.
-Damien

Alan Brennert

#70. If you're on the varsity team, the responsibilities are a lot bigger and there's more stress, but you also walk around feeling probably like you can hold your head high.

Damien Chazelle

#71. It's a little difficult when something goes from being an utter obsession - a thing where your skill defines you as a person - to it just being a thing you occasionally do.

Damien Chazelle

#72. I was always pretty decent at fast stick work or doing stuff that seems impressive that's not really; I was pretty tasteful and had good ideas musically. But I had a terrible sense of tempo, which is like being a blind painter.

Damien Chazelle

#73. Men fuck up, you know. Except for Damien," she adds with a completely straight face. "He's perfectly perfect." She manages to hold it together for a minute, and then we both laugh.

J. Kenner

#74. Stones taught me to fly, love taught me to lie, courage teach me to be shy ... because it's not hard to fall when you float like a cannonball.

Damien Rice

#75. I am really curious about life, about why we are all here. I notice my skin is ageing, things are changing, I've seen people dying, so that's the train we are all on.

Damien Rice

#76. I've learned over the years that sooner or later a person's physical appearance comes to resemble whatever is in their heart.

Damien Echols

#77. 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.

Damien Hirst

#78. But of course you don't have that power. Someone wants you, or your life does. The dog's misery was all of ours. Hear him howl! Some

Damien Wilkins

#79. Like many people, I only knew of Ford Madox Ford through a book called 'The Good Soldier,' which is everybody's favorite Ford Madox Ford if they have one, but I came to read 'Parade's End' when it was suggested via Damien Timmer of Mammoth Screen.

Tom Stoppard

#80. I was on paper earning more money and having more success than I'd ever had. And it was also the most miserable I've ever been. When those things collided, I realised something was off. That's when I started poking around to figure out what was wrong.

Damien Rice

#81. 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

#82. It's never your successful friends posting the inspirational quotes

Damien Fahey

#83. Life's not fair. And death is no exception.

Molly Looby

#84. That's the great thing about art. Anybody can do it if you just believe. With practice, you can make great paintings.

Damien Hirst

#85. 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

#86. 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

#87. 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

#88. I can tell from the tone of his voice and the thought processes in getting to where he's at that there's no point in talking to him further. He wanted to make that decision independent of all other factors and we respect that. [on Damien Martyn retiring

Ian Chappell

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

Damien Hirst

#90. 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

#91. When you're trying to paint a portrait of a very specific world, you're trying to show what makes the world different. So, sometimes it means exaggerating certain kind of aspects, but I don't think it's that important or it's that much of an issue as long as you get an emotional truth across.

Damien Chazelle

#92. For artists it's a lot easier to make art in bad times than it is in good times. When you've got no money it's easy to just drink your way through it and make great art. But if you're making lots of money it can be very problematic.

Damien Hirst

#93. I'm a massive fan of Brit Art in general and Damien Hirst in particular. I think he's an absolute genius and should be celebrated in every way.

David Morrissey

#94. Christmas Day itself is always bittersweet, because it's the last day of that beautiful magick that's been building up like a tidal wave for the past month. In just a week it will be hard to even remember what it's like. I'll be brokenhearted at the thought of it being gone again for an entire year.

Damien Echols

#95. There's a Nina Simone record that I love, 'Live at Vine Street,' and she sings flat on it. I can imagine she might've told the record label, 'Oh, God, you're not releasing that!' But I'm glad they did.

Damien Rice

#96. I don't celebrate Valentine's Day. It gets in the way of Black History Month. Cupid didn't free any slaves.

Damien Lemon

#97. Roy Keane is Damien, the devil incarnate off the film The Omen. He's evil. Even in training.

Ryan Giggs

#98. 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

#99. The difference between art about death and actual death is that one's a celebration and the other's a dull fact.

Damien Hirst

#100. 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