Quotes from Louise Bourgeois

It is a great privilege to be able to work with, and I suppose work off, my feelings through sculpture.

Space is something that you have to define. Otherwise, it is like anxiety, which is too vague. A fear is something specific. I like claustrophobic spaces, because at least then you know your limits.

I was raised a Catholic. But I am not religious. In my work, I am interested in real flesh and blood.

Art is a guarantee of sanity. That is the most important thing I have said.

Art is a way of recognizing oneself.

My art is a form of restoration in terms of my feelings to myself and to others.

Clothing is . . . an exercise in memory. It makes me explore the past: how did I feel when I wore that. They are like signposts in the search for the past.

Everywhere in the modern world there is neglect, the need to be recognized, which is not satisfied. Art is a way of recognizing oneself, which is why it will always be modern.

Art is a guarantee of sanity.

I work like a bee and feel that I accomplish little.

The subject of pain is the business I am in - to give meaning and shape to frustration and suffering. The existence of pain cannot be denied. I propose no remedies or excuses.

I dont watch TV. I dont use a computer, a fax or a cellphone.

To be an artist, you need to exist in a world of silence.

It is not so much where my motivation comes from but rather how it manages to survive.

The spider is a repairer. If you bash into the web of a spider, she doesn't get mad. She weaves and repairs it.

An artist can show things that other people are terrified of expressing.

I am not what I am, I am what I do with my hands...

The colour blue - that is my colour - and the colour blue means you have left the drabness of day-to-day reality to be transported into - not a world of fantasy, it's not a world of fantasy - but a world of freedom where you can say what you like and what you don't like. This has been expressed forever by the colour blue, which is really sky blue.

You learn for yourself not for others, not to show off, not to put the other one down/ learning is your secret, it is all you have, it is the only thing you can call your own. nobody can take it away…

And what's the use of talking, if you already know that others don't feel what you feel?

there are many realities

Every day you have to abandon your past or accept it, and then, if you cannot accept it, you become a sculptor.

You pile up associations the way you pile up bricks. Memory itself is a form of architecture.

My knives are like a tongue - I love, I do not love, I hate. If you don't love me, I am ready to attack. I am a double-edged knife.