Damien Hirst quotes:

Being best is a false goal, you have to measure success on your own terms.

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.

So smoking is the perfect way to commit suicide without actually dying. I smoke because it's bad, it's really simple.

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.

Painting like a child' isn't a negative for me... it's something only great artists can really achieve. The childlike quality of some of Picasso's drawings is precisely what makes them so masterful and extraordinary; the ability to express complete visions, feelings and portraits through a continuous line.

I remember when you used to have your profession on your passport and I always thought that being a painter was the best one to be, because my heroes were Goya and Francis Bacon.

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.

I've had laser eye surgery and I don't wear glasses any more, so people just go, 'You're not Damien Hirst.' I don't get recognized on the street.

The idea of being a painter, I've always thought, is better than being an artist or a sculptor.

I was brought up Catholic, and I felt the power of art from a very young age - seeing the brutality of all those images of flayed apostles and tortured saints was a pretty strong introduction.

It's amazing what you can do with an E in A-Level art, a twisted imagination and a chainsaw.

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.

Museums are for dead artists. I'd never show my work in the Tate. You'd never get me in that place.

The difference between art about death and actual death is that one's a celebration and the other's a dull fact.

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.

I've spent a long time avoiding painting and dealing with it from a distance. But as I get older, I'm more comfortable with it.

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.

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.

I think suicide is the most perfect thing you can do in life.

It's such a crass idea - you're either in love or out of love.

You'd never look at a Rembrandt and say, 'That's just wood and canvas and paint - how much?!' It's all about how many people want it. It works on a pair of jeans as well - they're just material and stitching, and as soon as you walk out of the shop, they're worth nothing.

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!

That's the great thing about art. Anybody can do it if you just believe. With practice, you can make great paintings.

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.

I think money is important for everyone, because the lack of it is so painful.

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.

You need a big ego to be an artist.

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.

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.

A painting probably is the most shocking increase in value, from what it costs to make to what you sell it for.

Picasso, Michelangelo, possibly, might be verging on genius, but I don't think a painter like Rembrandt is a genius.

I can't understand why most people believe in medicine and don't believe in art, without questioning either.

The spot paintings, the spin paintings, they're all a mechanical way to avoid the actual guy in a room, myself, with a blank canvas.

I love color. I feel it inside me. It gives me a buzz.

I mean, people listen to music, and they like that, but I think in England, a lot of people don't like contemporary art.

You've got to be able to copy things faithfully before you can deviate.

As an artist you're looking for universal triggers. You want it both ways. You want it to have an immediate impact, and you want it to have deep meanings as well. I'm striving for both. But I hate it when people write things that sound like they've swallowed a f... dictionary.

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.

You've really got to get down on the floor with yourself and get low in order to make great art. I think you've just got to accept who you are and do the most unbelievable things.

As a father, I would say I am more like a mother. I do a lot of hugging.

I think art is good at looking back and looking forward. I don't think art is good at looking head-on. At the end of the day, people are more important than paintings.

I did a load of medicine cabinets a long time ago and I named them after Sex Pistols songs. I suppose I must be getting old if I'm naming work after Philip Larkin poems.

If the choice is between buying another building or a Pollock, I'd go for the Pollock every time.

I think as an artist you have to reinvent yourself every day.

Kids are naturally gifted at art from a very young age. The problem is when they get older and become self-conscious. The process should always be fun, though.

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.

Painting is so poetic, while sculpture is more logical and scientific and makes you worry about gravity.

As an artist, you don't stop making art because people are not buying it.

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.

No, I don't believe in genius. I believe in freedom. I think anyone can do it. Anyone can be like Rembrandt.

I gave up painting by 16. I secretly thought I would have been Rembrandt by then.

Art goes on in your head. If you said something interesting, that might be a title for a work of art and I'd write it down.

Here's one from me: 'You have to be aware that everyone else is thinking far too hard about themselves to be thinking about you, whoever you are.' If you want it, you can have it. Once you know that, you can be free.

Commercials are so contemporary and up to date that when you're involved in that visual world, you can't really go backwards.

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.

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 think an ashtray is the most fantastically real thing.

In an artwork you're always looking for artistic decisions, so an ashtray is perfect. An ashtray has got life and death.

It's a great advantage to be able to play people off against each other, isn't it? You go to Christie's and get a quote on something. And then you go to Phillips' and you tell them what Christie's has given you. I like auctions for artists.

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.

For me, art is always a kind of theater. When I started the spot paintings, I made them as an endless series. But I was never serious about it being an endless series. It was just an implied endless series. The theater means you just have to make it look good for that moment in the spotlight.

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.

People don't like contemporary art, but all art starts life as contemporary - I can't really see a difference.

When I used to do abstract paintings at school, like everyone else, the tutor said these would make great curtains. I would always neglect the formal stuff that was going on by using colour, because colour kind of came naturally to me.

Sometimes when you're drunk you can see better.

The idea of going on tour for the rest of my life with old works is not that exciting. As an artist I definitely think the work in future is going to be better than the work in the past, otherwise why do it?

I'm 43. I'm not ready to sit down in a chair with my name on it yet.

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.

It's very easy to say, 'I could have done that,' after someone's done it. But I did it. You didn't. It didn't exist until I did it.

I believe all painting and art should be uplifting for the viewer.

Artists are like everybody else.

I always feel like the art's there and I just see it, so it's not really a lot of work.

I sometimes feel that I have nothing to say and I want to communicate this.

Art comes from everywhere. It's your response to your surroundings.

I like the confusion you get between science and religion â?¦ thatâ??s where belief lies and art as well.

It's ridiculous what I do. I can't believe in it - but I have to.

The idea is more important than the object.

I've never learned to drive because I get lots of ideas when I'm a passenger in a car. I love to get in a car with a driver and just think and work things out.

The best spot painting you can have by me is one painted by Rachel.

I can't wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it. At the moment if I did certain things people would look at it, consider it and then say "f off". But after a while you can get away with things.

There's always something you missed or something you didn't notice or somehow you got wrong... I don't really have a beginning.

You have to step over the boundaries sometimes just to find out where theyare.

Whenever I've been well-known or hitting the press, I've always had to get my credit card out to prove I'm Damien Hirst.

To be an artist is not about fame; it's about art, which is this intangible thing that has got to have lots of integrity, whereas being famous doesn't really take any integrity. But I think you have to admit that you want to be famous, otherwise you can't be an artist. Art and fame together are like a desire to live forever.

I have titles floating around in my head; I have sculptures floating around in my head. It's like a collage.

But then architects don't build their own houses.

When you've just done it, you're not sure. But when you've sat with it for a couple of hours and you don't want to do anything more to it, that's a great feeling. It can stand on its own two feet.

You can always tell a great painting, because when you get close there are all these nervous marks.

I just do what everybody asks me to do, in terms of media and stuff.

I just hope that I can be kind of like the Beatles. I really like that kind of model. I like the way that without losing integrity they could change through fashion and not look back at the '60s and vomit when they saw what they'd done.

Buy art, build a museum, put your name on it, let people in for free. That's as close as you can get to immortality...

The answer to how to live is to stop thinking about it.

I love art. It is uplifting.

I wanted a shark that's big enough to eat you, and in a large enough amount of liquid so that you could imagine you were in there with it.

What I really like is minimum effort for maximum effect.

But I always liked the fact that you get these totally unacceptable images, but they're taken by a really expensive photographer, with great light, and in terms of the quality of the photograph it's a great photograph, but in terms of imagery it's unacceptable, and I like that contradiction.

For me, art is always a kind of theater.

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.

I used to believe I was going to live forever. And then you suddenly become aware that you're not.

When we are no longer children, we are already dead.

Never let money get in the way of an idea

As soon as something becomes art I think you get over the fear

I always ignore money.

I think I like big issues, but I don't believe in God or religion.

In fact, the first piece of art I ever sold, I paid someone else to make the next one, so I could actually keep going out drinking.

Because it's visual art, a lot of it comes from childhood experience but then a lot comes from the visual language - in advertising and stuff like that - which is around us.

Immortality is really desirable, I guess. In terms of images, anyway.

I did a butterfly show in Berlin, and we had a guy who's an expert on butterflies; who bred them all and who looks after them all in the space.

I just wanted to find out where the boundaries were. So far I've found there aren't any. I just wanted to be stopped, and no one will stop me.

I always feel a bit trapped when a painting goes for millions of pounds and only one person can have it. If you can have that as well as a poster on every student's wall, then you're in a very enviable position. I'd like to do a Damien Hirst for £500 at some point.

I used to watch 'Top of the Pops' when I was a kid and say 'Yeah!' or 'Boo!' at every single song. So there was nothing in the middle. You brutally put it on one side or another.

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 cant be about being the best, it has to be about the drawing itself, what you do with it. Thats kind of stuck with me.

Art is the closest you can get to immortality, though it's a poor substitute - you're working for people not yet born - and people want it because it is brilliant. It ends up in museums anyway; the rich have to give it back to the people, it's their only option. There are no pockets in a shroud.

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.

But I could never make a judgement that something was obscene.

Sensation is an element of what I do, and why not? It's not sensational for the sake of being sensational, but it's sensational art... It's like touching skin.

I liked The Beatles a lot when I was growing up.

The infinite possibilities. That's what used to do my nut in.