Marina Abramovic Quotes

We are always in the space in-between... all the spaces where you are not actually at home. You haven't arrived yet.... This is where our mind is the most open. We are alert, we are sensitive, and destiny can happen. We do not have any barriers and we are vulnerable. Vulnerability is important. It means we are completely alive and this is an extremely important space. This is for me the space from which my work generates.

I think communication starts when words are not present at all ... I think we put so much emphasis on language, actually silence is so much more important.

The function of the artist in a disturbed society is to give awareness of the universe, to ask the right questions, and to elevate the mind.

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.

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.

Because we never stop silently loving those who we once loved out loud

Once, Picasso was asked what his paintings meant. He said, “Do you ever know what the birds are singing? You don’t. But you listen to them anyway.” So, sometimes with art, it is important just to look.

I am only interested in the ideas that become obsessive and make me feel uneasy. The ideas that I'm afraid of.

The experience I learned was that … if you leave decision to the public, you can be killed… I felt really violated: they cut my clothes, stuck rose thorns in my stomach, one person aimed the gun at my head, and another took it away. It created an aggressive atmosphere. After exactly 6 hours, as planned, I stood up and started walking toward the public. Everyone ran away, escaping an actual confrontation.

True love for whatever you are doing is the answer to everything.

A great artist has to be ready to fail.

Through performance, I found the possibility of establishing a dialogue with the audience through an exchange of energy, which tended to transform the energy itself. I could not produce a single work without the presence of the audience, because the audience gave me the energy to be able, through a specific action, to assimilate it and return it, to create a genuine field of energy.

Your ego can become an obstacle to your work. If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.

When you have so much pain, you think you will lose consciousness. If you say to yourself, ‘So what, lose consciousness,’ the pain goes away.

If we go for the easy way, then we never change.

Don't even ask me why. I do not know, I have no answer to this insane behaviour.

Happiness comes from the full understanding of your own being.

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. So to me it is really important to live in what I call the spaces in-between. Bus stations, trains, taxis or waiting rooms in airports are the best places because you are open to destiny, you are open to everything and anything can happen.

The body has an enormous power of healing, if you really believe you are going to be healed, you're going to be healed. If you really believe you're going to die, you're going to die. If you apply this kind of method to everything, then there is hope.

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.

Time is an illusion. Time only exists when we think about the past and the future. Time doesn't exist in the present here and now.

If you're a baker, making bread, you're a baker. If you make the best bread in the world, you're not an artist, but if you bake the bread in the gallery, you're an artist. So the context makes the difference.

I just want to create situations where people forget time.

Why not do something strange and different for once? Artists can do whatever they want!

I have always staged my fears as a way to transcend them.

We are actually living in a million parallel realities every single minute.

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.

An artist should not fall in love with another artist.

You know, art is very emotional business. But mostly it becomes not emotional, the fabric of commodity. It becomes business. It becomes so many different things. Because we forgot there was emotions involved.

I say we don't need art in nature, because it's so perfect without us. We need it in the cities. But the cities have absolutely lost their own center. They think having ten cars and a big bridge is the way to happiness. It's not.

The hardest thing to do is something that is close to nothing.

I believe stories are very important to all performances. The life story of the performer shapes their work, and the life stories of the audience alter how they receive the work, what they read into the performer.

The only thing I have learned is to find strength in yourself. No one can help you, no one can do anything for you, you have to do the work yourself.

To me the pain and the blood are merely means of artistic expression.

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.

Art comes from life, not from the studio

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.

The brother of my grandfather was the patriarch of the Orthodox Church and revered as a saint. So everything in my childhood is about total sacrifice, whether to religion or to communism. This is what is engraved on me. This is why I have this insane willpower. My body is now beginning to be falling apart, but I will do it to the end. I don't care. With me it is about whatever it takes.

I've always asked myself since I was young, what is my duty on this planet? What am I there for? Just to hang around? Everybody must have some purpose.

We always project into the future or reflect in the past, but we are so little in the present.

If you are really true to yourself and really follow your intuition in the most rigorous way, there is a moment that becomes universal, that reaches everybody. That’s the real magic of Björk-she teaches us the courage to be ourselves.

You create a friendship on a level that you've never done before. The basic kind of experience is to basically give love to total strangers all the time, and that really changed everything in me. And this piece transformed me more than any other one before. I saw my entire life differently. What do I have to do? What is my passion on this planet? I'm much more focused than I ever was before.

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.

From the moment you are born, you could die. I think as an artist it is important to meditate on that.

Most people are more comfortable with what is familiar. I’ve spent my life doing the opposite.

What you get is the opening of your mind. I'm not preaching any new religion; I'm ritualizing everyday activities. You drink the water. You count the rice. You sit in Crystal Cave. You lie in Levitation Chamber. You push yourself to a new level.

All my inspiration comes from life. That's how it never stops, in a way.

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.

I hate studio. For me, studio is a trap to overproduce and repeat yourself. It is a habit that leads to art pollution.

With classical ballet you are literally injuring yourself.