Warhol's Quotes

#1. Andy Warhol's art wasn't that interesting to me. He was more interesting to me as a person. He was art himself. I don't even think he was really into art, per se. He may have liked to do it, but I think he was more into people being into him.

ASAP Ferg

#2. I was a product of Andy Warhol's Factory. All I did was sit there and observe these incredibly talented and creative people who were continually making art, and it was impossible not to be affected by that.

Lou Reed

#3. Perhaps the rhinos and she-crocodiles whose gyrations between Mortimer's and East Hampton gives us our vision of social eminence today are content to entrust their faces to Andy Warhol's mingily cosmetic Polaroidising, but one would bet they would rather go to Sargent.

Robert Hughes

#4. But what was interesting about what the Who did is that we took things which were happening in the pop genre and represent them to people so that they see them in a new way. I think the best example is Andy Warhol's work, the image of Marilyn Monroe or the Campbell's soup can.

Pete Townshend

#5. You know what Andy Warhol's sole contribution to this country has been? He made Campbell's Soup a household word.

Alan Arkin

#6. Warhol's images made sense to me, although I knew nothing at the time of his background in commercial art. To be honest, I didn't think about him a hell of a lot.

Barbara Kruger

#7. Money is completely boring to me. It means nothing, except it feeds my art. Every penny I make goes back into the Haus of GaGa. My Haus of GaGa is something like Andy Warhol's Factory.

Lady Gaga

#8. Like viewers of Andy Warhol's films, the producers discovered that watching footage shot in real time was strangely unlike real life.

Jeffrey Ruoff

#9. Ultimately Warhol's private moral reference was to the supreme kitsch of the Catholic church.

Allen Ginsberg

#10. People have a tendency to think I was part of Warhol's Factory - I never was. I've always been independent.

Michel Auder

#11. My work doesn't have the same rules as, say, Andy [Warhol]'s work. But it's gathered together for the simple reason that we all worked with the images and objects around us.

Claes Oldenburg

#12. My idea of a good picture is one that's in focus and of a famous person.

Andy Warhol

#13. In an era when gay men like Beatles' manager Brian Epstein paid a fortune in blackmail to hustlers to keep their secrets safe, Andy Warhol took everything he was told to keep hidden and threw it right back in society's face.

Andrew Grant Jackson

#14. The most exciting thing is not doing it. If you fall in love with someone and never do it, it's much more exciting.

Andy Warhol

#15. My instinct about painting says, 'if you don't think about it, it's right.' As soon as you have to decide and choose, it's wrong. And the more you decide about, the more wrong it gets.

Andy Warhol

#16. I get so tired of painting. I've been trying to give it up all the time, if we could just make a living out of movies or the newspaper business or something. It's so boring, painting the same picture over and over.

Andy Warhol

#17. When I look at things, I always see the space they occupy. I always want the space to reappear, to make a comeback, because it's lost space when there's something in it.

Andy Warhol

#18. It's the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it.

Andy Warhol

#19. If there's ever a problem, I film it and it's no longer a problem. It's a film.

Andy Warhol

#20. Edward Smith: What do you think is the characteristic of a really nice person? Some people you obviously do like more than others.
Andy Warhol: Ummm, well, if they talk a lot.
ES: What, and don't make you talk?
AW: Yeah, yes, that's a really nice person.

Andy Warhol

#21. Andy Warhol says everyone will be famous for 15 minutes in the future, but even he couldn't have imagine today's fame is due to whom you sleep with.

Steve Kaufman

#22. You meet rich people and you hang around with them, and one night they've had a few drinks and they say 'I'll buy it!' Then they tell their friends, 'You must have this person's work, darling,' and that's all you need. That's all it takes. Get it?

Andy Warhol

#23. Eugene Mirman is the Andy Warhol of comedy. People look to him for what's next in comedy, and he emails these people back promptly. The Will to Whatevs put me in a great mood because I was laughing out loud. Alone. That's hard to do.

Mike Birbiglia

#24. You see so many people doing quite nice and respectful work, but nobody like Warhol. Warhol is outstanding. I think he has a value that is far from fully understood. He's very special for younger generations.

Ai Weiwei

#25. What would Warhol be without his paranoia, Hunter S. Thompson without his Quaaludes, Johnny Cash without his philandering? We Somebodies are not expected to walk the line.

J.T. Lawrence

#26. If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it.

Andy Warhol

#27. I think kids should go to high school until they're 30. No, really, because people are staying younger now and there's nothing to do. If you stayed longer, then it would be really great.

Andy Warhol

#28. The pop artists did images that anybody walking down Broadway could recognize in a split second - comics, picnic tables, men's trousers, celebrities, shower curtains, refrigerators, Coke bottles. All the great modern things that the Abstract Expressionists tried not to notice at all.

Andy Warhol

#29. And your own life while it's happening to you never has any atmosphere until it's a memory.

Andy Warhol

#30. A picture means I know where I was every minute. That's why I take pictures. It's a visual diary.

Andy Warhol

#31. Voyeurism is a director's job description. It's an artist's, too.

Andy Warhol

#32. Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone's got to take care of all your details.

Andy Warhol

#33. I met someone on the street who said wasn't it great that we're going to have a movie star for president, that it was so Pop, and (laughs) when you think about it like that, it is great, it's so American.

Andy Warhol

#34. Switzerland is my favorite place now, because it's so - nothing. There is absolutely nothing to do.

Andy Warhol

#35. If you don't think about it, it's right.

Andy Warhol

#36. I just do art because I'm ugly and there's nothing else for me to do.

Andy Warhol

#37. Actually, I jade very quickly. Once is usually enough. Either once only, or every day. If you do something once it's exciting, and if you do it every day it's exciting. But if you do it, say, twice or just almost every day, it's not good any more.

Andy Warhol

#38. I could write an entirely new book about Andy Warhol, but I don't think I will. I certainly don't think Nancy Reagan would like that, as she's been patiently waiting for Volume 2 of my chronicle of the life of her and Ronnie.

Bob Colacello

#39. Believe me ... I've made a career out of being the right thing in the wrong space and the wrong thing in the right space. That's one thing ... I really do know about.

Andy Warhol

#40. There's a famous artist, Ron English, in New York, that just, or Andy Warhol for that matter, that did pop art that terrorized society. And that's, for the last like 10, 15 years, that's all I wanted to do, is terrorize society and make them look into a mirror and see what the hell we have wrought.

Al Jourgensen

#41. In the post-Warhol era a single gesture such as uncrossing one's legs will have more significance than all the pages in War and Peace.

J.G. Ballard

#42. People do tend to avoid new realities; they'd rather just add details to the old ones. It's as simple as that.

Andy Warhol

#43. I'm seeking out a new way to live and if it's surfing, that's the way I'll do it. I'll be a surfer for the rest of my life.

Andy Warhol

#44. Free countries are great, because you can actually sit in somebody else's space for a while and pretend you're a part of it. You can sit in the Plaza Hotel and you don't even have to live there. You can just sit and watch the people go by.

Andy Warhol

#45. I was trying to think the other day about what you do now in America if you want to be successful. Before, you were dependable and wore a good suit. Looking around, I guess that today you have to do all the same things but not wear a good suit. I guess that's all it is. Think rich. Look poor.

Andy Warhol

#46. Just because people throw it out and don't have any use for it, doesn't mean it's garbage.

Andy Warhol

#47. When you work with people who misunderstand you, instead of getting transmissions, you get transmutations, and that's much more interesting in the long run.

Andy Warhol

#48. I always hear myself saying, 'She's a beauty!' or 'He's a beauty!' or 'What a beauty!' but I never know what I'm talking about.

Andy Warhol

#49. I think it would be very glamorous to be reincarnated as a great big ring on Liz Taylor's finger.

Andy Warhol

#50. Andy Warhol: I think everybody should like everybody.
Gene Swenson: Is that what Pop Art is all about?
Andy Warhol: Yes, it's liking things.

Andy Warhol

#51. People's fantasies are what give them problems. If you didn't have fantasies you wouldn't have problems because you'd just take whatever was there.

Andy Warhol

#52. The key of the success of Studio 54 is that it's a dictatorship at the door and a democracy on the dance floor.

Andy Warhol

#53. I'm very sad to be compared with Warhol and The Factory, because I have no drugs, you know. We have no drug culture in Japan! Maybe it's because our attitude toward labor is totally different.

Takashi Murakami

#54. It's high time for the art world to admit that the avant-garde is dead. It was killed by my hero, Andy Warhol, who incorporated into his art all the gaudy commercial imagery of capitalism (like Campbell's soup cans) that most artists had stubbornly scorned.

Camille Paglia

#55. I love Los Angeles, and I love Hollywood. They're beautiful. Everybody's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.

Andy Warhol

#56. I was a fan of Andy's since I was a small kid. I recall seeing an ad of famous people on an airplane together. It was caricature drawing. There was Muhammad Ali, there was Miles Davis, and there was Andy Warhol. I had a fascination with him since I was little.

Jeffrey Deitch

#57. After Wakefield Poole's films, mine are unnecessary and a bit naive, don't you think?

Andy Warhol

#58. Every time I work with Dr. Luke I learn something new. He's kind of like the Andy Warhol of pop music, where he mass produces his art but it always still has heart and always still has an emotional thread to it. I think he's really a genius and I'm so lucky to have gotten to work with him.

Bonnie McKee

#59. I've been invited to the White House about five times. I think the greatest thing would be if they actually invited everybody to the White House every night ... they'd just take about 500 people a night. Everybody would just love this country because it's so thrilling to go there. It really is.

Andy Warhol

#60. I like to work when I'm not working - do something that may not be considered work, but to me it's work. Getting exercise by going to the grocery store.

Andy Warhol

#61. If you're not trying to be real, you don't have to get it right. That's art.

Andy Warhol

#62. I love going out every night. It's so exciting.

Andy Warhol

#63. You know it's ART, when the check clears.

Andy Warhol

#64. The most beautiful thing in Tokyo is McDonald's. The most beautiful thing in Stockholm is McDonald's. The most beautiful thing in Florence is McDonald's. Peking and Moscow don't have anything beautiful yet.

Andy Warhol

#65. When the Woolworth's-Hot-Fudge-Sundae switch goes on, then I know I really have something.

Andy Warhol

#66. Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, So what. That's one of my favorite things to say. So what.

Andy Warhol

#67. People sometimes say the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually, it's the way things happen to you in life that's unreal.

Andy Warhol

#68. If everybody's not a beauty, then nobody is

Andy Warhol

#69. I do mostly portraits. So it's just people's faces, not really any ideas.

Andy Warhol

#70. Sometimes something can look beautiful just because it's different in some way from the other things around it. One red petunia in a window box will look very beautiful if all the rest of them are white, and vice-versa.

Andy Warhol

#71. They say rock is dead. Andy [Warhol] said art is dead. God is dead according to Nietzsche. If everything's dead what's alive? Only technology. We're in the era of technology.

Sean Lennon

#72. I'd asked around 10 or 15 people for suggestions. Finally one lady friend asked the right question, 'Well, what do you love most?' That's how I started painting money.

Andy Warhol

#73. As a composer and as a musician I'm a true believer - and this is not to be overly diplomatic - I'm a believer that there's artistry in everything from a lawn gnome to a desk chair to a symphony to an Andy Warhol painting. There's art in absolutely everything.

Darren Criss

#74. Why do people think artists are special? It's just another job.

Andy Warhol

#75. I love it when you ask actors, 'What are you Doing now?' and they say 'I'm between roles'. To be living 'life between roles' that's my favorite

Andy Warhol

#76. Warhol was a prime example of a schizoid person. Maybe he had Asperger's, or maybe he was just an amorous human being on earth.

Jim Shaw

#77. Exposure and attention make a work famous - the more you talk about it, the more attention it gets, the more validity it achieves.

Andy Warhol

#78. Andy [Warhol] was on the scene, but he wasn't an artist at first; he was more an illustrator. He was always surrounded by about ten people who worshipped him. He'd go to a party and they would all come along. But he was drawing shoes and that sort of thing.

Claes Oldenburg

#79. I think they should have movies in restaurants. I can't believe that so many people get together just to sit there. It's so abstract ... isn't it abstract? What are these people sitting here watching?

Andy Warhol

#80. I think anybody can take a good picture. My idea of a good picture is one that's in focus and of a famous person doing something unfamous. It's being in the right place at the wrong time.

Andy Warhol

#81. I keep mementos from everything I've done. I've got my cab driver's license from 'Happiness.' I've got a pair of glasses and a belt buckle from playing John Lennon. I've got a pair of sunglasses from playing Andy Warhol ... It's all in a box in the garage.

Jared Harris

#82. The only benefit of a Campbell's soup can by Andy Warhol (and it is an immense benefit) is that it releases us from the need to decide between beautiful and ugly, between real and unreal, between transcendence and immanence.

Jean Baudrillard

#83. Fame is a modern phenomenon caused by the explosion of media, where there's a zillion digital channels and snappers everywhere. It's so attainable, so people can have their Warhol 15 minutes of fame, and some are so aggressive.

Simon Fuller

#84. My fascination with letting images repeat and repeat - or in film's case 'run on' - manifests my belief that we spend much of our lives seeing without observing.

Andy Warhol

#85. But I always say, one's company, two's a crowd, and three's a party

Andy Warhol

#86. ...that's when I realized that Bianca doesn't really take drugs - just a few poppers and maybe some coke once in a while but otherwise she's not on drugs, she's normal.

Andy Warhol

#87. Maybe the reason my memory is so bad is that I always do at least two things at once. It's easier to forget something you only half-did or quarter did.

Andy Warhol

#88. I like church. It's empty when I go. I walk around. There are so many beautiful Catholic churches in New York.

Andy Warhol

#89. You have to hang on in periods when your style isn't popular, because if it's good, it'll come back, and you'll be a recognized beauty once again.

Andy Warhol

#90. Wallace Boyer (Car Salesman): Sell cars long enough and you'll see: Nobody's all that original. Any lone weirdo comes from a big nest of weirdos. What's weird is, you go to some pigsty village in Slovakia, and suddenly even Andy Warhol makes perfect sense.

Chuck Palahniuk

#91. TV has eaten up everything else, and Warhol films are all that are left, which is fabulous. Pork could become the next I Love Lucy, the great American domestic comedy. It's about how people really live, not like Lucy, who never touched dishwater. It's about people living and hustling to survive.

David Bowie

#92. Whenever I'm interested in something, I know the timing's off, because I'm always interested in the right thing at the wrong time. I should just be getting interested after I'm not interested any more.

Andy Warhol

#93. I think Chelsea Girls is a complete masterpiece and I think Andy's [Warhol] films are equally as good as the art. I think one day they will be considered equal. They aren't yet. They will be.

John Waters

#94. I admit to having worn suede and leather pants myself for a while, but you just never feel clean, and it's degenerate, anyway, to wear animal skins ... So I went back to bluejeans after my degenerate period.

Andy Warhol

#95. 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

#96. Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.

Andy Warhol

#97. That's the hard part of overdosing on cherries-you have all the pits to tell you exactly how many you ate. Not more or less. Exactly. One-seed fruits really bother me for that reason. That's why I'd always rather eat raisins than prunes. Prune pits are even more imposing than cherry pits.

Andy Warhol

#98. Most people in America think Art is a man's name.

Andy Warhol

#99. I wonder if it's possible to have a love affair that lasts forever.

Andy Warhol

#100. It's not what you are that counts, it's what they think you are.

Andy Warhol