Damien Hirst Quotations

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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.
And I think, you know, I like it, so I can't understand it, I think if you're gonna have this stuff going in your ears, you might as well have some stuff going in your eyes.
Anything you can do with your hands and feet. Great.
Artists are like everybody else.
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.
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.
But I could never make a judgement that something was obscene.
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 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.
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.
But then architects don't build their own houses.
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.
Commercials are so contemporary and up to date that when you're involved in that visual world, you can't really go backwards.
I always feel like the art's there and I just see it, so it's not really a lot of work.
I always ignore money.
I can't deny it's influenced by Jaws.
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.
I don't really buy any, but I have a lot of friends who do, so I go out sober and say I'm not gonna take any drugs and then I end up drunk and do it. And then wake up the next day and say I'm never doing that again.
I don't really have a career plan.
I don't think I'd want my pet in formaldehyde, but I guess in America they would.
I have a Californian girlfriend and she's into a lot of Californian bands so I listen to that.
I have titles floating around in my head; I have sculptures floating around in my head. It's like a collage.
I just do what everybody asks me to do, in terms of media and stuff.
I liked The Beatles a lot when I was growing up.
I made one untitled piece.
I mean, people listen to music, and they like that, but I think in England, a lot of people don't like contemporary art.
I think an ashtray is the most fantastically real thing.
I think as an artist you have to reinvent yourself every day.
I think if you've made it, why not name it?
I think it's just, I really enjoy art, and I just hope that when people come and see the exhibition, I want them to be just grabbed and thrown around a bit by visual things.
I think suicide is the most perfect thing you can do in life.
I thought it might be nice to have a little line on the side going, just in case, of doing famous people's pets for them, in formaldehyde.
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.
I've seen things that are 200 years old, in formaldehyde.
Immortality is really desirable, I guess. In terms of images, anyway.
In an artwork you're always looking for artistic decisions, so an ashtray is perfect. An ashtray has got life and death.
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.
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.
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.
It's such a crass idea - you're either in love or out of love.
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.
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.
One thing leads to another with my work.
So smoking is the perfect way to commit suicide without actually dying. I smoke because it's bad, it's really simple.
Sometimes when you're drunk you can see better.
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.
There's always something you missed or something you didn't notice or somehow you got wrong... I don't really have a beginning.
There's no possible way you can get what you want.
To me it's like, this is the kind of world I live in and these are all the people who are artists who are doing what I'm doing, but in their own way.
We have had some animal rights things but they all get the facts wrong so they have to go away looking a bit stupid.
What I really like is minimum effort for maximum effect.
Whenever I go to another city to do an art exhibition, the only way to get through it is to get drunk, because it's so similar to the last one.
Whereas if you suddenly go, OK, I choose to die now, you take the matter into your own hands.
Yeah, maybe a morbid sense of humour, I wouldn't say it was sick, but maybe other people would. I like bad jokes.