Quotes from Marina Abramovic

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

The most revolutionary ideas are not sellable, but only mind-changing.

There's not any subject the public doesn't know about me. I don't have secrets, and this is so liberating because this makes me free.

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.

People have so much pain inside them that they're not even aware of.

We make such terrible mistakes with visual choices about beauty.

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

For me, performance is a holy ground. When I perform, I really step into a different state of consciousness.

First of all, to do performance art, you really have to give 100 percent. I only know that I have to give 100 percent and then what happens, happens.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.'

Because of technology, we don't develop telepathy. We don't use telepathy, but use, you know, the mobile phones. Why?

I want to dominate the man's world.

I had such an intense relationship to every person. I still see people on the street and we lock eyes, and say "Oh my god!" and we just kiss and stay like that and sometimes cry.

A great artist has to be ready to fail.

Galás is a great artist with a very powerful voice.

Dali Lama said, 'when you open the heart of the person with humor, you can tell him the most truth. But if you tell him truth without humor, the heart closes.'

Americans aren't accepting of black humor, it's terrible.

I want people to come to me open and vulnerable. When they come to the gallery, they have to leave their watches, their computers, their Blackberrys, iPads, iPhones, because we are so incredibly used to technology, and I wanted to remove that.

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 plenty lonely in hotel rooms.