When I was 14, I thought I looked terrible. I wore these typical Slavic shoes with metal bottoms so you could always hear me coming and this really ugly princess skirt and blouse with the top button closed. I had a boy haircut, a baby face covered with pimples, and a really big nose.
— Marina Abramovic
An artist should not fall in love with another artist.
Being an artist is not easy - I have always said that to the students I have taught over the years. It's a huge sacrifice.
When Lady Gaga says I am her inspiration, you reach kids between 12 and 18. Now I am like a brand - jeans, Coca-Cola.
I want to dominate the man's world.
You know, James Franco is one of the most interesting figures because he has no rules. He breaks all the borders.
We make such terrible mistakes with visual choices about beauty.
We are actually living in a million parallel realities every single minute.
I don't do husbands. I don't do children.
I believe that life is shorter; that is why we have to make experience longer.
The mind is crazy thing. To be focused is the most difficult thing.
The public is in need of experiences that are not just voyeuristic. Our society is in a mess of losing its spiritual centre.
People put so much effort into starting a relationship and so little effort into ending one.
With classical ballet you are literally injuring yourself.
Artists should never think of themselves as an idol. Fame is a side effect of one's work.
Even now, I have traces of the good little girl. When I am not performing, for instance, I am really very quiet and ordinary.
A powerful performance will transform everyone in the room.
It's very important that young artists push boundaries, because sometimes you have this urge to do something - like the impulsive and dangerous urges I had as a child - and if you don't follow through with it you might miss out on a developmental experience.
The hardest thing to do is something that is close to nothing.
I used to have a recurring dream where I was at a party in a country house, surrounded by the same people each evening. Everyone would be singing and dancing and after a while I came to know the people; though, of course, they never really existed.
People in New York never have time for anything.
Why am I not feminist? Maybe because I come from a country where my mother ruled my life. I never felt in any way that I couldn't achieve what I want.
You know, everyone is always talking about plastic surgery, or the technology, what to do. I really think it's important to help yourself with the technology if you want to feel better, but I am absolutely against any kind of monstrous cuts of the body, lifting that is beyond recognition, this kind of stuff.
From the moment you are born, you could die. I think as an artist it is important to meditate on that.
You know how you feel somebody looking at you, and you turn, and somebody actually is? It's the same at an art gallery. You're looking at one portrait, turn around, and there is a work of art directly behind you. Because it's all energy. Every single thing has energy.
For me, the most difficult piece is the one I'm about to make.
Today, our attention is less than the television advertisement. We're looking at six or seven problems constantly. We're living in the disturbed societies of cities. I think modern technology is one of the worst things human beings have invented.
We are used to cleaning the outside house, but the most important house to clean is yourself - your own house - which we never do.
Your ego can become an obstacle to your work. If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.
I'm interested in utopian communities of the past. Many of them didn't survive and I'm examining closely the reasons they failed.
Once you live in New York, you can't live anywhere else. Living in Paris is like going in slow motion. It's so bourgeois. I get so bored.
People ask why there are so few female artists who succeed. It's because women are not ready to sacrifice as much as men. Women want a man, they want a family, they want to have children, they want to be loved, and to be an artist. And they can't; it's impossible.
When people ask me where I am from I never say, 'Serbia.' I always say, 'I come from a country that no longer exists.'
My grandmother, when she looked at American movies, she said, 'They're all the same. In the first scene somebody shoots somebody and then everybody makes phone calls.'
I had a very difficult relationship with my mother. She used to wake me up in the middle of the night if I wasn't sleeping straight and was messing up the sheets. Now when I stay in hotels I sleep so straight they don't even think I've used the bed.
To really change the way society thinks, you have to give your entire being to it until there's nothing left.
I am not a therapist. I am not a spiritual leader. These elements are in the art: it is therapeutic, spiritual, social and political - everything. It has many layers. But art has to have many layers. If it doesn't, then forget it.
So many artists say they're not aware of audience. For me is unbelievable.
I'm interested in asking: 'What does feminine energy mean?' I don't have answers - I just have questions and interesting examples.
If you see a Renaissance body, this is completely ugly in this time. Everybody has to be skinny. But the Renaissance body with incredible flow of the meat everywhere, it was beauty.
Happiness comes from the full understanding of your own being.
I really don't like art where you need to know so much theory to understand. If the theory is removed, it doesn't do anything. That means that this work is an illustration of theory, and I don't believe in the power of the work itself.
All my inspiration comes from life. That's how it never stops, in a way.
To control the breathing is to control the mind. With different patterns of breathing, you can fall in love, you can hate someone, you can feel the whole spectrum of feelings just by changing your breathing.
The only theatre I do is my own. Somehow, my life is the only life that I can play.
In every ancient culture, there are rituals to mortify the body as a way of understanding that the energy of the soul is indestructible.
In America, everyone's always hiding their age.
I notice if I'm too fat or if I'm too ugly or there's skin hanging or whatever. When my clothes start not fitting, I get really self-conscious about what I eat.
I hate kitchens. I don't understand these enormous American kitchens that take up half the living room and then they just order pizza.
I am obsessive always, even as a child. On one side is this strict orthodox religion, on the other is communism, and I am this little girl pulled between the two. It makes me who I am. It turns me into the kind of person that Freud would have a field day with, for sure.
