A biography for Marina Abramovichasn’t been written yet.
“My grandmother, when she looked at American movies, she said, 'They're all the same. In the first scene somebody shoots somebody and then everybody makes phone calls.'”
“I was friends with Susan Sontag the last four years of her life. She had this amazing charisma and so much energy, but she had a sad little funeral in Montparnasse in Paris.”
“I always sent my mother all these huge books I made. When my mother died, I was cleaning her cupboard, and these big books were only 20 pages long.”
“An artist has to look at the future, to see what we can do better.”
“Why am I not feminist? Maybe because I come from a country where my mother ruled my life. I never felt in any way that I couldn't achieve what I want.”
“All my inspiration comes from life. That's how it never stops, in a way.”
“I'm not feminist, by the way. I am just an artist.”
“You can't choreograph death, but you can choreograph your funeral.”
“I had a very difficult relationship with my mother. She used to wake me up in the middle of the night if I wasn't sleeping straight and was messing up the sheets. Now when I stay in hotels I sleep so straight they don't even think I've used the bed.”
“I am very clear that I am not a feminist. It puts you into a category and I don't like that.”
“Good art is never made in studio. Good art I make in life.”
“I am plenty lonely in hotel rooms.”
“I was friends with Susan Sontag the last four years of her life. She had this amazing charisma and so much energy, but she had a sad little funeral in Montparnasse in Paris. It was rainy. It was all wrong. And I was thinking, 'God, she loved life so much.'”
“Once you live in New York, you can't live anywhere else. Living in Paris is like going in slow motion. It's so bourgeois. I get so bored.”
“I believe the artist has an obligation to society.”
“I don't think anyone does anything from happiness. Happiness is such a good state, it doesn't need to be creative. You're not creative from happiness, you're just happy. You're creative when you're miserable and depressed. You find the key to transform things. Happiness does not need to transform.”
“The world doesn't need an artist who shows reality as it is.”
“In my work I have complete control, but about my life, I don't want to.”
“From the moment you are born, you could die. I think as an artist it is important to meditate on that.”
“I believe so much in the power of performance I don't want to convince people. I want them to experience it and come away convinced on their own.”