Marina Abramovic

“I want to dominate the man's world.”

“When I was 14, I thought I looked terrible. I wore these typical Slavic shoes with metal bottoms so you could always hear me coming and this really ugly princess skirt and blouse with the top button closed. I had a boy haircut, a baby face covered with pimples, and a really big nose.”

“Being an artist is not easy - I have always said that to the students I have taught over the years. It's a huge sacrifice.”

“To be a performance artist, you have to hate theatre. Theatre is fake... The knife is not real, the blood is not real, and the emotions are not real. Performance is just the opposite: the knife is real, the blood is real, and the emotions are real.”

“I have this exercise that I propose to everybody: Hug a tree and complain for a minimum 15 minutes. Be yourself, and do something that you really feel deeply.”

“I face so much jealousy, and I am incredibly upset about it.”

“We are used to cleaning the outside house, but the most important house to clean is yourself - your own house - which we never do.”

“I am thrilled Lady Gaga has helped to teach her audience about long durational work and performance art.”

“Woody Allen has a wonderful line: 'Today I'm a star. What will I be tomorrow? A black hole?' That's very important to know - that you have the moment, then you lose the moment. You have to see your chances, you have to take them, and you also have to see when you don't have chances to take.”

“Artists should never think of themselves as an idol. Fame is a side effect of one's work.”

“Performance is there, and if you are not there in that moment it happened, it just stays in the memory. It's so immaterial and something this immaterial is very difficult to collect. Its difficult to buy, its how we can buy immaterial art.”

“If you're a baker, making bread, you're a baker. If you make the best bread in the world, you're not an artist, but if you bake the bread in the gallery, you're an artist. So the context makes the difference.”

“If you see a Renaissance body, this is completely ugly in this time. Everybody has to be skinny. But the Renaissance body with incredible flow of the meat everywhere, it was beauty.”

“There's plenty of talented women. Why do men take over the important positions? It's simple. Love, family, children - a woman doesn't want to sacrifice all of that.”

“Happiness comes from the full understanding of your own being.”

“Your ego can become an obstacle to your work. If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.”

“To be in a magazine when you're 20 is okay, but when you do it when you're 65, it's much more fun!”

“In real life, you just work for the ordinary self, but in the front of audience you become the superself. That's a completely different thing.”

“I am not a therapist. I am not a spiritual leader. These elements are in the art: it is therapeutic, spiritual, social and political - everything. It has many layers. But art has to have many layers. If it doesn't, then forget it.”

“The function of the artist in a disturbed society is to give awareness of the universe, to ask the right questions, and to elevate the mind.”