Andy Warhol quotes:

We live in an age when the traditional great subjects - the human form, the landscape, even newer traditions such as abstract expressionism - are daily devalued by commercial art.

Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.

When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships.

Human beings are born solitary, but everywhere they are in chains - daisy chains - of interactivity. Social actions are makeshift forms, often courageous, sometimes ridiculous, always strange. And in a way, every social action is a negotiation, a compromise between 'his,' 'her' or 'their' wish and yours.

If you want to know all about Andy Warhol, just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me, and there I am. There's nothing behind it.

They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.

I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumors to my dogs.

I'd asked around 10 or 15 people for suggestions. Finally one lady friend asked the right question, 'Well, what do you love most?' That's how I started painting money.

My idea of a good picture is one that's in focus and of a famous person.

Now and then, someone would accuse me of being evil - of letting people destroy themselves while I watched, just so I could film them and tape-record them. But I didn't think of myself as evil - just realistic.

Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.

Art is what you can get away with.

So many people seem to prefer my silver-screenings of movie stars to the rest of my work. It must be the subject matter that attracts them, because my death and violence paintings are just as good.

What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest.

When I look around today, the biggest anachronism I see is pregnancy. I just can't believe that people are still pregnant.

Employees make the best dates. You don't have to pick them up and they're always tax-deductible.

I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own.

Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.

When you think about it, department stores are kind of like museums.

The childlike, gum-chewing naivete, the glamour rooted in despair, the self-admiring carelessness, the perfected otherness, the wispiness, the shadowy, voyeuristic, vaguely sinister aura, the pale, soft-spoken magical presence, the skin and bones . . .

Isn't life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?

In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.

Voyeurism is a director's job description. It's an artist's, too.

I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.

An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have.

I think they should have movies in restaurants. I can't believe that so many people get together just to sit there. It's so abstract... isn't it abstract? What are these people sitting here watching?

I'll bet there are a lot of artists that nobody hears about who just make more money than anybody. The people that do all the sculptures and paintings for big building construction. We never hear about them, but they make more money than anybody.

I think the first photograph I did was a ballplayer. It was a way of showing action or something.

I always like to see if the art across the street is better than mine.

I like boring things.

I can never get over when you're on the beach how beautiful the sand looks and the water washes it away and straightens it up and the trees and the grass all look great. I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own.

James Dean was the damaged but beautiful soul of our time.

I'm the type who'd be happy not going anywhere as long as I was sure I knew exactly what was happening at the places I wasn't going to. I'm the type who'd like to sit home and watch every party that I'm invited to on a monitor in my bedroom.

I smoke pot because I want to go to heaven before I die

Good business is the best art of all.

Land really is the best art.

I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say 'figment.'

I want to die with my blue jeans on.

Rodeo Drive is a giant butterscotch sundae.

Those who talk about individuality the most are the ones who most object to deviation, and in a few years it may be the other way around. Some day everybody will just think what they want to think, and then everybody will probably be thinking alike; that seems to be what is happening.

Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone's got to take care of all your details.

I never understood why when you died, you didn't just vanish, everything could just keep going on the way it was only you just wouldn't be there. I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say 'figment.'

Sex is more exciting on the screen and between the pages than between the sheets.

The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.

I had a lot of dates but I decided to stay home and dye my eyebrows.

Switzerland is my favorite place now, because it's so - nothing. There is absolutely nothing to do.

Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, So what. That's one of my favorite things to say. So what.

In the future, everybody will be world famous for fifteen minutes.

When the Woolworth's-Hot-Fudge-Sundae switch goes on, then I know I really have something.

People should fall in love with their eyes closed.

Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.

Since people are going to be living longer and getting older, they'll just have to learn how to be babies longer.

I wake up every morning. I open my eyes and think: here we go again.

I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They're beautiful. Everybody's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.

It's the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it.

I'm confused about who the news belongs to. I always have it in my head that if your name's in the news, then the news should be paying you. Because it's your news and they're taking it and selling it as their product. If people didn't give the news their news, and if everybody kept their news to themselves, the news wouldn't have any news.

I still care about people but it would be so much easier not to care. I don't want to get too close; I don't like to touch things...

People are always so boring when they band together. You have to be alone to develop all the idiosyncrasies that make a person interesting.

Don't pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.

I can't bear to let all this beautiful talk go by. Everybody says... fantastic things. People are always putting it down as an invasion of privacy, but I think everyone should be bugged all the time... bugged and photographed.

Kiss me with your eyes.

I love the English language just like I love all American things. But I confess that I don't feel confident using complex sentences or big words, hence my famous minimally expressive style - all the "gees" and laconic answers to interviewers. Most of all, I have developed listening as an art form.

You need to let the little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you.

I really do live for the future, because when I'm eating a box of candy, I can't wait to taste the last piece.

You'd be surprised how many people want to hang an electric chair on their living-room wall. Specially if the background color matches the drapes.

It would be very glamorous to be reincarnated as a great big ring on Liz Taylor's finger.

I wonder if it's possible to have a love affair that lasts forever.

I suppose I have a really loose interpretation of 'work,' because I think that just being alive is so much work at something you don't always want to do. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.

Nutty people are always writing me. I always think I must be on some nutty mailing list.

My ideal city would be one long main street with no cross streets or side streets to jam up traffic. Just a long one-way street.

Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.

I'm bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is 'In 15 minutes everybody will be famous.'

The mosquito is the state bird of New Jersey.

I met someone on the street who said wasn't it great that we're going to have a movie star for president, that it was so Pop, and (laughs) when you think about it like that, it is great, it's so American.

Edward Smith: What do you think is the characteristic of a really nice person? Some people you obviously do like more than others. Andy Warhol: Ummm, well, if they talk a lot. ES: What, and don't make you talk? AW: Yeah, yes, that's a really nice person.

Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting. The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.

I do the same thing everyday. I go to work and paint. I try to turn out as many pictures as I can.

I never wanted to be a painter; I wanted to be a tap dancer.

Sometimes something can look beautiful just because it's different in some way from the other things around it. One red petunia in a window box will look very beautiful if all the rest of them are white, and vice-versa.

Pop art is about liking things.

Once you 'got' Pop, you could never see a sign again the same way again. And once you thought Pop, you could never see America the same way again.

That's the hard part of overdosing on cherries-you have all the pits to tell you exactly how many you ate. Not more or less. Exactly. One-seed fruits really bother me for that reason. That's why I'd always rather eat raisins than prunes. Prune pits are even more imposing than cherry pits.

I can't remember my dreams more than a couple of seconds after I wake up. It's frustrating because sometimes I dream that I'm watching a really good movie.

Exposure and attention make a work famous - the more you talk about it, the more attention it gets, the more validity it achieves.

When I think about what sort of person I would most like to have on a retainer, I think it would be a boss. A boss who could tell me what to do, because that makes everything easy when you're working.

In the future everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes

Everybody must have a fantasy.

Romance is finding your fantasy in people who don't have it.

I'm bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is "In 15 minutes everybody will be famous.

People sometimes say the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually, it's the way things happen to you in life that's unreal.

I've been invited to the White House about five times. I think the greatest thing would be if they actually invited everybody to the White House every night... they'd just take about 500 people a night. Everybody would just love this country because it's so thrilling to go there. It really is.

As soon as you stop wanting something, you get it.

History books are being re-written all the time

It's the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it."Andy Warhol

It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.

I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumours to my dogs.

You know it's ART, when the check clears.

I never understood why when you died, you didn't just vanish, everything should just keep going on the way it was only you just wouldn't be there. I always thought I'd like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I'd like it to say 'figment'.

You have to be willing to get happy about nothing.

I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want.

Sociological critics are waste makers.

I like to be the right thing in the wrong place and the wrong thing in the right place. Being the right thing in the wrong place and the wrong thing in the right place is worth it because something interesting always happens.

I've decided something: Commercial things really do stink. As soon as it becomes commercial for a mass market it really stinks.

I am a deeply superficial person.

I really like to work a lot. It makes time go by fast.

I will go to the Opening of Anything, including a Toilet Seat

When you work with people who misunderstand you, instead of getting transmissions, you get transmutations, and that's much more interesting in the long run.

Even beauties can be unattractive. If you catch a beauty in the wrong light at the right time, forget it. I believe in low lights and trick mirrors. I believe in plastic surgery.

People sometimes say that the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually, it's the way things happen to you in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like you're watching television -- you don't feel anything.

I don't believe people die. They just go uptown. To Bloomingdales. They just take longer to get back.

You have to do stuff that average people don't understand because those are the only good things.

Wasting money puts you in a real party mood.

Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there - I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television.

I think anybody can take a good picture. My idea of a good picture is one that's in focus and of a famous person doing something unfamous. It's being in the right place at the wrong time.

I loved working when I worked at commercial art and they told you what to do and how to do it and all you had to do was correct it and they'd say yes or no. The hard thing is when you have to dream up the tasteless things to do on your own.

I just happen to like ordinary things. When I paint them, I don't try to make them extraordinary. I just try to paint them ordinary-ordinary.

I think it would be terrific if everybody was alike.

I love Los Angeles, and I love Hollywood. They're beautiful. Everybody's plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.

If you're not trying to be real, you don't have to get it right. That's art.

I used to think that everything was just being funny but now I don't know. I mean, how can you tell?