Quotes About Expression

Much later on, I read a statement of Bruce Nauman's: "Art is a matter of life and death." It sounds melodramatic, but it's so true. This was exactly how it was for me

I realise the power of art that does not hang on the walls of galleries.

Immaterial art is the strongest because there's no obstacle; there's just energy, and I believe in energy.

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.

I hate studio. For me, studio is a trap to overproduce and repeat yourself. It is a habit that leads to art pollution.

In the beginning, I was a painter, but the moment I stood in front of the public and expressed my ideas using my body as the object and subject of the work, immediately it was clear that this is my best medium. I struggled with acceptance; my early career was hell. But it took me all these years to create a foundation so that performance would become accepted in the same way as photography and video. You have to believe that you're right, even if everybody believes you are wrong.

I made a tape recording of a bridge collapsing and I wanted to play it suddenly and very loudly when people were walking over a big bridge in Belgrade. The council forbid it. Their imagination is tiny; mine is big. I want always to shake everything up.

When you're 50, the best thing to do is dance the Argentinean tango.

When you are a young artist, you have no idea what you are doing. Every artist who says he knows, it is a lie.

Talking about performance is such a strange thing because it's so immaterial. We are talking about soft matter. We are talking about something that is invisible. You can't see it. You can't touch it. You just can feel it.

I'd always thought of art as something that was expressed through certain tools: painting, sculpture, photography, writing, film, music, architecture. And yes, performance. But this performance went beyond performance. This was life.

I always thought the more fucked-up childhood you have, the better artist you get, because you have more material to work with. I don't think anyone does anything from happiness. Happiness is such a good state, it doesn't need to be creative.

In the performer's body, you don't care how you look. It doesn't matter if you're old, fat, beautiful, or ugly. It doesn't change anything. The only thing is your charisma and how you express your idea.

sometimes … sometimes you have to tell them who you are. What you really think. You have to make them see us.

In high school everyone thought I was kind of a freak. 'Rock Girl,' they'd call me. But around here people think it's okay. That's what's so cool about college, you know? You have a million kids doing all kinds of weird things here.

for the first time I start to actually imagine me sitting on concrete steps like this, or in a class reading lots of fat books and saying what I think.

We all share the right to create our own savage, as Glifford Geertz has remarked [ Out of the Garden ].

In a world where everyone wants black-and-white answers, Coyote finger paints in Technicolor.

I can tell in two minutes if I should hire someone in the kitchen. Two minutes. It's his desire. It's that open-eyed, attentive expression. If he doesn't have it ... I mean, I can teach a chimp how to cook dinner. But I cannot teach a chimp how to love it.

The very common error of young or unconfident cooks is to keep putting more of their own personal ideology into a plate until there's so much noise that you really can't even hear a tune. You can say more in an empty space than you can in a crowded one.

Recipes are just descriptions of one person's take on one moment in time. They're not rules. People think they are. They look as if they are. They say, "Do this, not this. Add this, not that." But, really, recipes are just suggestions that got written down.

I come from an Italian family. One of the greatest and most profound expressions we would ever use in conversations or arguments was a slamming door. The slamming door was our punctuation mark.

When I was in college, I used to write little ditties and short stories and poetry for my friends. Writing a book is another thing. It is so much different from my traditional day of dirty fingernails and greasy hair and hot pans.

Emotions can even affect whether certain genes are turned "on" or "off"—altering, for example, our bodies' response to stress.