Anselm Kiefer

“If I do something that depresses, it's not because I'm depressed, but because political life and history is depressing.”

“Art is longing. You never arrive, but you keep going in the hope that you will.”

“I am against the idea of the end, that everything culminates in paradise or judgment.”

“History is formed by the people, those who have power and those without power. Each one of us makes history.”

“Art is difficult. It's not entertainment.”

“Buying art is not understanding art.”

“When, at the end of the 1960s, I became interested in the Nazi era, it was a taboo subject in Germany. No one spoke about it anymore, no more in my house than anywhere else.”

“Life is an illusion. I am held together in the nothingness by art.”

“But I believe above all that I wanted to build the palace of my memory, because my memory is my only homeland.”

“I grew up in a forest. It's like a room. It's protected. Like a cathedral... it is a place between heaven and earth.”

“Ruins, for me, are the beginning. With the debris, you can construct new ideas. They are symbols of a beginning.”

“Art really is something very difficult. It is difficult to make, and it is sometimes difficult for the viewer to understand. It is difficult to work out what is art and what is not art.”

“I was interested in transcendence from a very early age. I was interested in what was over there, what was behind life. So when I had my first communion I was very disappointed. I had expected something amazing and surprising and spiritual. Instead all I got was a bicycle. That wasn't what I was after at all.”

“But we should also not forget the difference between what first motivated me and the work that is the result.”

“History speaks to artists. It changes the artist's thinking and is constantly reshaping it into different and unexpected images.”

“I believe in empty spaces; they're the most wonderful thing.”

“When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not.”

“I might have been born into a very literal sense of chaos, but in fact that state is true of all of us.”

“Not content, but the road the artist takes, is the interesting part.”

“The reason for this project comes from my childhood, that is clear to me. I did not have any toys. So, I played in the bricks of ruined buildings around me and with which I built houses.”