I'm 43. I'm not ready to sit down in a chair with my name on it yet.
— Damien Hirst
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.
There's no possible way you can get what you want.
So smoking is the perfect way to commit suicide without actually dying. I smoke because it's bad, it's really simple.
I think an ashtray is the most fantastically real thing.
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.
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.
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.
But 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.
I always ignore money.
It's such a crass idea - you're either in love or out of love.
I think suicide is the most perfect thing you can do in life.
Sometimes when you're drunk you can see better.
Artists are like everybody else.
I always feel like the art's there and I just see it, so it's not really a lot of work.
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.
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.
I made one untitled piece.
In an artwork you're always looking for artistic decisions, so an ashtray is perfect. An ashtray has got life and death.
Immortality is really desirable, I guess. In terms of images, anyway.
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.
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.
