Damien Hirst
Great art - or good art - is when you look at it, experience it and it stays in your mind. I don't think conceptual art and traditional art are all that different.Collection: Art
It's amazing what you can do with an E in A-Level art, a twisted imagination and a chainsaw.Collection: Imagination
The difference between art about death and actual death is that one's a celebration and the other's a dull fact.Collection: Death
In an artwork you're always looking for artistic decisions, so an ashtray is perfect. An ashtray has got life and death.Collection: Art
But I think it's more that when you're young, you're invincible, you're immortal - or at least you think you are. The possibilities are limitless, you're inventing the future. Then you get older and suddenly you have a history. It's fixed. You can't change anything. I find that a bit disturbing, to be honest.Collection: History
People don't like contemporary art, but all art starts life as contemporary - I can't really see a difference.Collection: Art
So smoking is the perfect way to commit suicide without actually dying. I smoke because it's bad, it's really simple.
Sometimes when you're drunk you can see better.
You need a big ego to be an artist.
I think suicide is the most perfect thing you can do in life.
I was taught to confront things you can't avoid. Death is one of those things. To live in a society where you're trying not to look at it is stupid because looking at death throws us back into life with more vigour and energy. The fact that flowers don't last for ever makes them beautiful.
When it comes to the British monarchy, I prefer to be seduced by an image than presented with a real person. It's kind of a Warhol thing.
I have always been aware that you have to get people listening before you can change their minds. Any artist's big fear is being ignored, so if you get debate, that's great.
Immortality is really desirable, I guess. In terms of images, anyway.
I always look at money not as a motivating factor but as an element in the composition. You can't ignore it, but you've got to be very careful that it's not motivating you.
But it's like the horror of being in a studio with a blank canvas. I used to always run out of ideas because there are so many possibilities and I would just think, well what am I going to do now!
Museums are for dead artists. I'd never show my work in the Tate. You'd never get me in that place.
I used to believe I was going to live forever. And then you suddenly become aware that you're not.
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.
Most people live in the city and go to the country at the weekend, and that's posh and aristocratic, but actually to live in the country and come to London when you can't take it any more is different.
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.
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.
The goal in life is to be solid, whereas the way that life works is totally fluid, so you can never actually achieve that goal.
The spot paintings and spin paintings were trying to find mechanical ways to make paintings.
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.
Since I was a child, death is definitely something that I think about every day. But I think that everybody does. You try and avoid it, but it's such a big thing that you can't.
Painting is so poetic, while sculpture is more logical and scientific and makes you worry about gravity.
People always say that my work is sensational or shocking but there are truly shocking things you could do, and my sculptures don't go anywhere near that.
Picasso, Michelangelo, possibly, might be verging on genius, but I don't think a painter like Rembrandt is a genius.
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.
As a father, I would say I am more like a mother. I do a lot of hugging.
It's such a crass idea - you're either in love or out of love.
A lot of people thought I wasn't doing anything because I was spending a lot of time socialising and going out, but I've always managed to get work actually done.
I think an ashtray is the most fantastically real thing.
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.
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 always feel like the art's there and I just see it, so it's not really a lot of work.
It'd be nice to make lots of money but it's quite difficult, because every time I make lots of money I make a bigger piece that costs lots of money.
Artists are like everybody else.
I made one untitled piece.
There's no possible way you can get what you want.
My Mum brought me up to believe that if you look after the pennies then the pounds look after themselves, and I could never do it.
I always ignore money.
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'm 43. I'm not ready to sit down in a chair with my name on it yet.
For me, art is always a kind of theater.
I think I've always been afraid of painting, really. Right from the beginning. All my paintings are about painting without a painter. Like a kind of mechanical form of painting.
Being best is a false goal, you have to measure success on your own terms.
I realised that you couldn't use the tools of yesterday to communicate today's world. Basically, that was the big light that went on in my head.
No, I don't believe in genius. I believe in freedom. I think anyone can do it. Anyone can be like Rembrandt.