Top 100 Hirst's Quotes
#1. 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
#2. It's ridiculous what I do. I can't believe in it - but I have to.
Damien Hirst
#3. 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
#4. But then architects don't build their own houses.
Damien Hirst
#6. I have a Damien Hirst spot painting which I love. It has pride of place over my dining-room table.
Cat Deeley
#7. You have to step over the boundaries sometimes just to find out where theyare.
Damien Hirst
#8. The idea of being a painter, I've always thought, is better than being an artist or a sculptor.
Damien Hirst
#9. I had a passport where I wrote 'artist' under 'occupation' and I remember thinking, 'That's it, it's proved!'
Damien Hirst
#10. The coolest party I've ever D.J.ed would have to be for the artist Damien Hirst. It was an amazing party in Berlin. I had such a great time, and people danced all night long.
Chelsea Leyland
#11. 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
#12. If the choice is between buying another building or a Pollock, I'd go for the Pollock every time.
Damien Hirst
#13. You've got to be able to copy things faithfully before you can deviate.
Damien Hirst
#14. There's no possible way you can get what you want.
Damien Hirst
#15. I love Damien Hirst. I respect his work a great deal, and I am happy that the polka dots I started using have become a symbol of love and peace around the world with everybody joining hands to use them in this way.
Yayoi Kusama
#16. I think I like big issues, but I don't believe in God or religion.
Damien Hirst
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. I always feel like the art's there and I just see it, so it's not really a lot of work.
Damien Hirst
#20. 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
#21. I'm 43. I'm not ready to sit down in a chair with my name on it yet.
Damien Hirst
#22. I love color. I feel it inside me. It gives me a buzz.
Damien Hirst
#23. The spot paintings and spin paintings were trying to find mechanical ways to make paintings.
Damien Hirst
#24. That was the issue: all these sick people trying to make other sick people better. Where were the strong, healthy people? They were probably the one's making everyone else sick. The
Francis Hirst
#25. That's the great thing about art. Anybody can do it if you just believe. With practice, you can make great paintings.
Damien Hirst
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. 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
#30. It's such a crass idea - you're either in love or out of love.
Damien Hirst
#31. The infinite possibilities. That's what used to do my nut in.
Damien Hirst
#32. So smoking is the perfect way to commit suicide without actually dying. I smoke because it's bad, it's really simple.
Damien Hirst
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. 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
#37. 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
#38. 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
#39. It's amazing what you can do with an E in A-Level art, a twisted imagination and a chainsaw.
Damien Hirst
#40. 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
#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. 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
#43. Art comes from everywhere. It's your response to your surroundings.
Damien Hirst
#44. 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
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. 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
#48. When art is defined by Damien Hirst and Jeff Koons, you've got a society that's impoverished.
Robert Adams
#49. 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
#50. People love cliches. If you can give people cliches, that's very good TV, then.
Michael Hirst
#51. 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
#52. 'Downton Abbey' is just one cliche after another, and it is a really, really poor piece of drama. But that's only me talking. That's just my take on it.
Michael Hirst
#53. 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
#54. With 'The Tudors,' I had a huge amount of material, I mean so many books and so much stuff about what they really said. So, in a way it was kind of trying to strip it out and find the stories inside all this material.
Michael Hirst
#55. 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
#56. I liked The Beatles a lot when I was growing up.
Damien Hirst
#58. Painting is so poetic, while sculpture is more logical and scientific and makes you worry about gravity.
Damien Hirst
#59. 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
#60. 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
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. I couldn't give 'Vikings' away - I mean, I love these people. And I'm not sure anyone else writing it would necessarily have the same feeling towards the characters that I do.
Michael Hirst
#64. 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
#65. The difference between art about death and actual death is that one's a celebration and the other's a dull fact.
Damien Hirst
#66. the people of Lebanon' were offering a 'model' and a 'strong proof that it is not only Gaza, the West Bank and Jerusalem which Arab armies and peoples are capable of liberating, but - with one small decision and a bit of determination - [the whole of] Palestine too, from the river to the sea'.4
David Hirst
#67. 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
#68. I like the confusion you get between science and religion ... that's where belief lies and art as well.
Damien Hirst
#69. 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
#70. Being best is a false goal, you have to measure success on your own terms.
Damien Hirst
#71. 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
#72. Would that we could choose the last image we see before death closes our eyes forever to this world.
Nick Hirst
#73. For 'Vikings,' we have to do so much outside shooting, and it's normally - I think with American shows, it'll be 60 or 70 percent inside and a little bit outside, but with us, it's almost 70 percent outside, and that's huge and really difficult.
Michael Hirst
#74. I think art is good at looking back and looking forward. I don't think art is good at looking head-on. At the end of the day, people are more important than paintings.
Damien Hirst
#75. 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
#76. I felt that a lot of Viking culture had been caricatured and misconstrued. After all, they were far more democratic than the Saxons and the Francs, who were exercising really hierarchical social structures at that time. The Vikings had popular meetings where everything could be discussed.
Michael Hirst
#78. 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
#79. The best spot painting you can have by me is one painted by Rachel.
Damien Hirst
#80. 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
#82. 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
#83. The Vikings certainly didn't write anything about themselves; it was not a literate, but rather a pagan, culture. So what we get was written later by Christian monks. But there were occasional reportings and recordings of people who had traded usually with the Vikings.
Michael Hirst
#84. The American obsession with 'Downton' amuses me slightly because it's such a fiction. I've always been questioned about my historical veracity, and 'Downton' just flies past, when it's completely made up.
Michael Hirst
#85. I'm very bad at delegating writing responsibilities, because I've never been able to do it; I've never had any help or looked for any help.
Michael Hirst
#86. Great art, she felt, had a calming effect on the viewer; it made one stop in awe, which is exactly what Damien Hirst and Andy Warhol did not do. You did not stop in awe. They stopped you in your tracks, perhaps, but that was not the same thing; awe was something quite different
Alexander McCall Smith
#87. When I did 'The Tudors,' there was massive information available and a ready-made market.
Michael Hirst
#88. 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
#89. 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
#90. 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
#91. 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
#92. 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
#93. I quite like it to be risky. I'm not ready to sit down in a chair with my name on it yet. I've arrived at that point in the art world where there really is a chair that you sit in.
Damien Hirst
#94. In fact, the first piece of art I ever sold, I paid someone else to make the next one, so I could actually keep going out drinking.
Damien Hirst
#95. Pupils may learn many things when a teacher is not in fact teaching.
Paul Q. Hirst
#96. I've found that using historical material and being rooted in historical material is liberating because I always think to myself, 'Well, this actually happened, and this is fantastic!' That's why I don't like fantasy, in a way. Because it's sort of in emptiness.
Michael Hirst
#97. No, I don't believe in genius. I believe in freedom. I think anyone can do it. Anyone can be like Rembrandt.
Damien Hirst
#98. I used to believe I was going to live forever. And then you suddenly become aware that you're not.
Damien Hirst
#99. A painting probably is the most shocking increase in value, from what it costs to make to what you sell it for.
Damien Hirst
#100. 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
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
