Marina Abramovic

“After my performance 'The Artist is Present (2010)' at MoMA in New York, many scientists became interested in why so many people who sat across from me began to cry. I was incredibly moved by this experience also, and was very curious to know what happens in our brains when we spend time not talking, just looking at one another.”

“There are good artists that have children. Of course there are. They are called men.”

“With classical ballet you are literally injuring yourself.”

“I hate kitchens. I don't understand these enormous American kitchens that take up half the living room and then they just order pizza.”

“An artist should not fall in love with another artist.”

“I change so many houses and places where I live; I change them like I change socks. I don't have this absolute, kind of, how you say, attachment. My brother, if he just has to go to holiday to sleep in different bed, for him it is a disaster. I can sleep under this table or in a five-star hotel; I don't care.”

“First of all, to do performance art, you really have to give 100 percent. I only know that I have to give 100 percent and then what happens, happens.”

“All the aggressive actions I do to myself I would never dream of doing in my own life - I am not this kind of person. I cry if I cut myself peeling potatoes. I am taking the plane, there is turbulence, I am shaking. In performance, I become, somehow, like not a mortal.”

“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.”

“Unconditional love with someone you've never met is a straightforward feeling that is so overwhelming and fulfilling.”

“I'm interested in utopian communities of the past. Many of them didn't survive and I'm examining closely the reasons they failed.”

“We make such terrible mistakes with visual choices about beauty.”

“For me, the most difficult piece is the one I'm about to make.”

“I hate studios. A studio is a black hole. I never use a studio to work. It's very artificial to go to a studio to get new ideas. You have to get new ideas from life, not from the studio. Then you go to the studio to realize the idea.”

“I am obsessive always, even as a child. On one side is this strict orthodox religion, on the other is communism, and I am this little girl pulled between the two. It makes me who I am. It turns me into the kind of person that Freud would have a field day with, for sure.”

“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.”

“From a very early time, I understood that I only learn from things I don't like.”

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

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

“I notice if I'm too fat or if I'm too ugly or there's skin hanging or whatever. When my clothes start not fitting, I get really self-conscious about what I eat.”