Damien Hirst

“That's the great thing about art. Anybody can do it if you just believe. With practice, you can make great paintings.”

“Making art, good art, is always a struggle. It can make you happy when you pull it off. There's no better feeling. It's beauteous. But it's always about hard work and inspiration and sweat and good ideas.”

“It's good to have a title that's not just one word. If you're gonna title it, you might as well try and say something.”

“I've been asked to do a retrospective since I was about 28 and I always thought that was a bit odd. It's great to look forward as an artist because in the future the possibilities are infinite; you look back and it's all fixed so it's a scary thing.”

“I had a passport where I wrote 'artist' under 'occupation' and I remember thinking, 'That's it, it's proved!'”

“The difference between art about death and actual death is that one's a celebration and the other's a dull fact.”

“Immortality is really desirable, I guess. In terms of images, anyway.”

“I'm 43. I'm not ready to sit down in a chair with my name on it yet.”

“But the answer to how to live is to stop thinking about it. And just to live. But you're doing that anyway. However you intellectualise it, you still just live.”

“I made one untitled piece.”

“But whenever I look at the question of how to live, the answer's always staring me in the face. I'm already doing it.”

“There was a point I could have just churned out the spot and spin paintings for ever and laughed all the way to the bank.”

“The spot paintings and spin paintings were trying to find mechanical ways to make paintings.”

“I've spent a long time avoiding painting and dealing with it from a distance. But as I get older, I'm more comfortable with it.”

“Museums are for dead artists. I'd never show my work in the Tate. You'd never get me in that place.”

“For me, art is always a kind of theater.”

“But I'm more interested in why people are frightened by Jaws and why Jaws was such a hit than saying Spielberg's my main influence.”

“So smoking is the perfect way to commit suicide without actually dying. I smoke because it's bad, it's really simple.”

“I think suicide is the most perfect thing you can do in life.”

“Even as a kid in drawing class, I had real ambition. I wanted to be the best in the class, but there was always some other feller who was better; so I thought, 'It can't be about being the best, it has to be about the drawing itself, what you do with it.' That's kind of stuck with me.”