Great Quotes by Damien Hirst
So smoking is the perfect way to commit suicide without actually dying. I smoke because it’s bad, it’s really simple.
Damien Hirst
Sometimes when you’re drunk you can see better.
Damien Hirst
I think suicide is the most perfect thing you can do in life.
Damien Hirst
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
In an artwork you’re always looking for artistic decisions, so an ashtray is perfect. An ashtray has got life and death.
Damien Hirst
Painting is so poetic, while sculpture is more logical and scientific and makes you worry about gravity.
Damien Hirst
People don’t like contemporary art, but all art starts life as contemporary – I can’t really see a difference.
Damien Hirst
For me, art is always a kind of theater.
Damien Hirst
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
Museums are for dead artists. I’d never show my work in the Tate. You’d never get me in that place.
Damien Hirst
It’s amazing what you can do with an E in A-Level art, a twisted imagination and a chainsaw.
Damien Hirst
I was taught to confront things you can’t avoid. Death is one of those things. To live in a society where you’re trying not to look at it is stupid because looking at death throws us back into life with more vigour and energy. The fact that flowers don’t last for ever makes them beautiful.
Damien Hirst
I think an ashtray is the most fantastically real thing.
Damien Hirst
Great art – or good art – is when you look at it, experience it and it stays in your mind. I don’t think conceptual art and traditional art are all that different.
Damien Hirst
Painting like a child’ isn’t a negative for me… it’s something only great artists can really achieve. The childlike quality of some of Picasso’s drawings is precisely what makes them so masterful and extraordinary; the ability to express complete visions, feelings and portraits through a continuous line.
Damien Hirst
I was brought up Catholic, and I felt the power of art from a very young age – seeing the brutality of all those images of flayed apostles and tortured saints was a pretty strong introduction.
Damien Hirst
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
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
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
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
Artists are like everybody else.
Damien Hirst
I gave up painting by 16. I secretly thought I would have been Rembrandt by then.
Damien Hirst
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
Kids are naturally gifted at art from a very young age. The problem is when they get older and become self-conscious. The process should always be fun, though.
Damien Hirst
It’s such a crass idea – you’re either in love or out of love.
Damien Hirst
But I think it’s more that when you’re young, you’re invincible, you’re immortal – or at least you think you are. The possibilities are limitless, you’re inventing the future. Then you get older and suddenly you have a history. It’s fixed. You can’t change anything. I find that a bit disturbing, to be honest.
Damien Hirst
No, I don’t believe in genius. I believe in freedom. I think anyone can do it. Anyone can be like Rembrandt.
Damien Hirst
I remember when you used to have your profession on your passport and I always thought that being a painter was the best one to be, because my heroes were Goya and Francis Bacon.
Damien Hirst
When I used to do abstract paintings at school, like everyone else, the tutor said these would make great curtains. I would always neglect the formal stuff that was going on by using colour, because colour kind of came naturally to me.
Damien Hirst
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
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
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
I always feel like the art’s there and I just see it, so it’s not really a lot of work.
Damien Hirst
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
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
Immortality is really desirable, I guess. In terms of images, anyway.
Damien Hirst
I made one untitled piece.
Damien Hirst
It’s such a crass idea – you’re either in love or out of love.
Damien Hirst
There’s no possible way you can get what you want.
Damien Hirst
I always ignore money.
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.
Damien Hirst
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.
Damien Hirst
I’m 43. I’m not ready to sit down in a chair with my name on it yet.
Damien Hirst
I used to believe I was going to live forever. And then you suddenly become aware that you’re not.
Damien Hirst
I think I’ve always been afraid of painting, really. Right from the beginning. All my paintings are about painting without a painter. Like a kind of mechanical form of painting.
Damien Hirst
Being best is a false goal, you have to measure success on your own terms.
Damien Hirst
Picasso, Michelangelo, possibly, might be verging on genius, but I don’t think a painter like Rembrandt is a genius.
Damien Hirst
You need a big ego to be an artist.
Damien Hirst
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
A painting probably is the most shocking increase in value, from what it costs to make to what you sell it for.
Damien Hirst
Whenever I’ve been well-known or hitting the press, I’ve always had to get my credit card out to prove I’m Damien Hirst.
Damien Hirst
The idea of going on tour for the rest of my life with old works is not that exciting. As an artist I definitely think the work in future is going to be better than the work in the past, otherwise why do it?
Damien Hirst