Quotes from Christo

Our work is a scream of freedom.

The only place where people in Manhattan walk for leisure is in the park.

It is not only one person's work, it's really a partnership and collaboration during all these years.

Therefore, when we arrive in a place and talk to new people about a new image, it is very hard for them to visualize it. That's where the drawings are very important, because at least we can show a projection of what we believe it will look like.

We tell them that we believe it will be beautiful because that is our specialty, we only create joy and beauty. We have never done a sad work. Through the drawings, we hope a majority will be able to visualize it.

I do a lot of work that's permanent. The drawings, the sculptures, they're permanent.

To keep that absolute freedom we cannot be obliged to anyone.

Because we do not sell photographs, we have no royalties on books, posters, postcards.

I escaped from my home country, Bulgaria, to Czechoslovakia and then to the West.

Now, there is no way to say how long some projects take, that's our principle.

In 1964, Jeanne-Claude and I became illegal aliens. That's when we moved here from Paris. And for three years, we were illegal aliens living in an illegal building. At that time, some artists started to move to SoHo, and they put A.I.R. - artists-in-residence - up on their windows.

And for me, the real world involves everything: risk, danger, beauty, energy, all we meet with in the real world.

We wish to work in total freedom.

Therefore we have to go over the fact that all human beings are afraid by what is new. It is our work to convince them that they will enjoy it, and even if they don't, to allow us just for 14 days to create that work of art.

The other work we started in 1992, it is called Over the River, Project for the Arkansas River in the state of Colorado, we haven't got the permit yet. And, we are working at both of those, trying to get the permit. Therefore, we do not know which one will be realized next.

People think our work is monumental because it's art, but human beings do much bigger things: they build giant airports, highways for thousands of miles, much, much bigger than what we create.

Germany is an economic giant but a political midget, and with the end of the Cold War she has started to muscle her presence throughout Europe and the world.

The other exception where we did not at all restore the place to its original condition is the Surrounded Islands. Before we installed our fabric, we had our workers remove 42 tons of garbage off the beaches of those islands. We never brought the garbage back.

Some of the projects we've proposed over the years have been refused. But we never do other people's ideas; our ideas come out of our two hearts and our two heads.

Often the art in New York is related to the buildings, to grandiose things.

We never work on only one project because we never know if we will get permission for a project. So, for 'Over the River,' we started in 1992. I was just finishing 'The Umbrellas' in Japan and California, and I was also working on getting permission to wrap the Reichstag.

If some of our works are symphonies, then wrapped walkways was chamber music.

Now, to describe the process of the Wrapped Reichstag, which went from 1971 to '95, there is an entire book about that, because each one of our projects has its own book. The book is not an art book, meaning it's not written by an art historian.

That could stay, not forever, because we believe that nothing exists that is forever, not even the dinosaurs, but if well maintained, it could remain for four to five thousand years. And that is definitely not forever.