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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Free Literature Study Guides
The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Marina Abromovic Quotes

When people ask me where I am from, I never say Serbia. I always say I come from a country that no longer exists.

– Marina Abromovic

I don’t think anyone does anything from happiness. Happiness is such a good state, it doesn’t need to be creative. You’re not creative from happiness, you’re just happy. You’re creative when you’re miserable and depressed. You find the key to transform things. Happiness does not need to transform.

– Marina Abromovic

Every party is the same: too many people, too little food, and you have to wait around. I’m extremely bored with parties.

– Marina Abromovic

I hate studios. A studio is a black hole. I never use a studio to work. It’s very artificial to go to a studio to get new ideas. You have to get new ideas from life, not from the studio. Then you go to the studio to realize the idea.

– Marina Abromovic

There are good artists that have children. Of course there are. They are called men.

– Marina Abromovic

To be in a magazine when you’re 20 is okay, but when you do it when you’re 65, it’s much more fun!

– Marina Abromovic

I always sent my mother all these huge books I made. When my mother died, I was cleaning her cupboard, and these big books were only 20 pages long.

– Marina Abromovic

There’s plenty of talented women. Why do men take over the important positions? It’s simple. Love, family, children – a woman doesn’t want to sacrifice all of that.

– Marina Abromovic

I’ve been criticized by my generation, artists from the ’70s – and there’s nothing more tragic than artists from the ’70s still doing art from the ’70s – because I blur all these borders between fashion and pop.

– Marina Abromovic

The entire aim of my work is to elevate the human spirit. We can put the human spirit down so easily.

– Marina Abromovic

I give people a space to simply sit in silence and communicate with me deeply but non-verbally.

– Marina Abromovic

When I taught art, I was always asked, ‘How do you know you’re an artist? What makes you an artist?’ And to me, it’s like breathing. You don’t question if you breathe; you have to breathe. So if you wake up in the morning, and you have to realize an idea, and there’s another idea, and another, maybe you are really an artist.

– Marina Abromovic

I don’t have tattoos, I have scars!

– Marina Abromovic

From a very early time, I understood that I only learn from things I don’t like.

– Marina Abromovic

I face so much jealousy, and I am incredibly upset about it.

– Marina Abromovic

I hate repetition. Even when I am home and have to buy milk, I go a different way each time to avoid having a habit of anything. Habits are really bad.

– Marina Abromovic

It’s so easy to do things you like. But then, the thing is, when you’re afraid of something, face it; go for it. You become a better human being.

– Marina Abromovic

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.

– Marina Abromovic

I am plenty lonely in hotel rooms.

– Marina Abromovic

One of my aims was to be paid as well as a plumber. Plumber was better-paid than any performance artist who was always doing this for free. It is so important to make a good living from art. You know, John Cage, until he was 60, he couldn’t pay electricity.

– Marina Abromovic

I had three abortions because I was certain that it would be a disaster for my work.

– Marina Abromovic

Unconditional love with someone you’ve never met is a straightforward feeling that is so overwhelming and fulfilling.

– Marina Abromovic

I can explain my work to the cleaner or the president; it’s all the same to me. I am very communist in this way.

– Marina Abromovic

If you’re a woman, it’s almost impossible to establish a relationship. You’re too much for everybody. It’s too much. The woman always has to play this role of being fragile and dependent. And if you’re not, they’re fascinated by you, but only for a little while. And then they want to change you and crush you. And then they leave.

– Marina Abromovic

Of course I dream to have this perfect man who does not want to change me. And I’m so not marriage material, it’s terrible. But my dream is to have those Sunday mornings, where you’re eating breakfast and reading newspapers with somebody.

– Marina Abromovic

To be a performance artist, you have to hate theatre. Theatre is fake… The knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real. Performance is just the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real.

– Marina Abromovic