A biography for Marina Abramovichasn’t been written yet.
“People put so much effort into starting a relationship and so little effort into ending one.”
“I test the limits of myself in order to transform myself, but I also take the energy from the audience and transform it.”
“You know I very much respect Yvonne Rainer, she is very important - in American dance, the entire development of modern dance, and creating a wonderful physical language.”
“My mother and father had a terrible marriage. They celebrated their wedding anniversary one year with their friends. Why did they celebrate? Maybe because they had lasted so many years without killing each other.”
“I really think there's no difference between an art piece made by a man and one made by a woman. Is it a good art piece or a bad art piece? Of course, if you're female, you're maybe dealing with different issues.”
“I had difficult mother, difficult childhood like she had. She is Sagittarius like I am. I almost died from broken heart because of love. And she really did.”
“From the very early stage when I started doing performance art in the '70s, the general attitude - not just me, but also my colleagues - was that there should not be any documentation, that the performance itself is artwork and there should be no documentation.”
“A powerful performance will transform everyone in the room.”
“To really change the way society thinks, you have to give your entire being to it until there's nothing left.”
“I have always staged my fears as a way to transcend them.”
“I hate repetition. Even when I am home and have to buy milk, I go a different way each time to avoid having a habit of anything. Habits are really bad.”
“People ask why there are so few female artists who succeed. It's because women are not ready to sacrifice as much as men. Women want a man, they want a family, they want to have children, they want to be loved, and to be an artist. And they can't; it's impossible.”
“I am only interested in the ideas that become obsessive and make me feel uneasy. The ideas that I'm afraid of.”
“Aborigines are not just the oldest race in Australia; they are the oldest race on the planet. They look like dinosaurs.”
“I don't do husbands. I don't do children.”
“When people ask me where I am from I never say, 'Serbia.' I always say, 'I come from a country that no longer exists.'”
“One of my aims was to be paid as well as a plumber. Plumber was better-paid than any performance artist who was always doing this for free. It is so important to make a good living from art. You know, John Cage, until he was 60, he couldn't pay electricity.”
“I give people a space to simply sit in silence and communicate with me deeply but non-verbally.”
“Of course I dream to have this perfect man who does not want to change me. And I'm so not marriage material, it's terrible. But my dream is to have those Sunday mornings, where you're eating breakfast and reading newspapers with somebody.”
“It's very important that young artists push boundaries, because sometimes you have this urge to do something - like the impulsive and dangerous urges I had as a child - and if you don't follow through with it you might miss out on a developmental experience.”