Quotes from Marina Abramovic

If I'm not nervous, I'm nervous. You never know how people are going to receive the work.

In America, everyone's always hiding their age.

The only time I really feel tired and old is when I look back; I always like to look just in the front of me. I'll always feel like I didn't finish enough, such a short time is left, and there's still so much to do.

I serve like a bridge. I go to other cultures, learn, put myself in different situations and learn as much as I can, and then go to Western cultures to give. I'm doing this bridging all the time.

I'm talking about intellectually and emotionally challenging, but at the same time it's actually not that challenging. So there's this dichotomy.

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

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

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.

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

Today, our attention is less than the television advertisement. We're looking at six or seven problems constantly. We're living in the disturbed societies of cities. I think modern technology is one of the worst things human beings have invented.

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.

I don't do husbands. I don't do children.

In every ancient culture, there are rituals to mortify the body as a way of understanding that the energy of the soul is indestructible.

Even now, I have traces of the good little girl. When I am not performing, for instance, I am really very quiet and ordinary.

My mother and father had a terrible marriage. They celebrated their wedding anniversary one year with their friends. Why did they celebrate? Maybe because they had lasted so many years without killing each other.

I was friends with Susan Sontag the last four years of her life. She had this amazing charisma and so much energy, but she had a sad little funeral in Montparnasse in Paris. It was rainy. It was all wrong. And I was thinking, 'God, she loved life so much.'

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.

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

I test the limits of myself in order to transform myself, but I also take the energy from the audience and transform it.

A powerful performance will transform everyone in the room.

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.

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.

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.

Yes, 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.