Yayoi Kusama quotes:

New York is the place that made my and other artists' dreams come true by giving us a chance to realise our ideas and concepts. It was a great place for making a presentation of artistic creation.

I have been taking every step toward the future every day through making many paintings and sculptures with my deep emotion hidden in my life.

In my home country, there was a little shop with old books, but it was really in the countryside. You couldn't find English books. I found this very avant-garde American art book that had information about Georgia O'Keeffe. I was very much impressed by her.

Since my childhood, I have always made works with polka dots. Earth, moon, sun and human beings all represent dots; a single particle among billions.

With just one polka dot, nothing can be achieved. In the universe, there is the sun, the moon, the earth, and hundreds of millions of stars. All of us live in the unfathomable mystery and infinitude of the universe. Pursuing 'philosophy of the universe' through art under such circumstances has led me to what I call 'stereotypical repetition.'

I love painting so much that nothing else matters.

Polka dots can't stay alone. When we obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dots, we become part of the unity of our environments.

I think I will be able to, in the end, rise above the clouds and climb the stairs to Heaven, and I will look down on my beautiful life.

When I was a child, I used to paint intently. The older I become, and the closer death approaches, the brighter my life gets day by day.

It doesn't matter at all for me that I work in hospital or anywhere with limited space. Every day, I'm creating new works with all my might.

I, Kusama, am the modern Alice in Wonderland.

Suppose I put polka dots all over my body and then cover my background completely with polka dots. The polka dots on my body, merging with those in the background, create an optically strange scene.

I believe that eyes are very important motifs. That's something that can discern the peace and love.

My art originates from hallucinations only I can see. I translate the hallucinations and obsessional images that plague me into sculptures and paintings.

Forget yourself. Become one with eternity. Become part of your environment.

Polka dots can't stay alone. When we obliterate nature and our bodies with polka dots we become part of the unity of our environments.

Certainly, I devote my energy to both telling my personal life story and seeking self- obliteration. However, I will not destroy myself through art.

I love Damien Hirst. I respect his work a great deal, and I am happy that the polka dots I started using have become a symbol of love and peace around the world with everybody joining hands to use them in this way.

I believe that eyes are very important motifs. Thats something that can discern the peace and love.

I am putting every effort toward creating my works from morning till night on every single day.

I wanted to start a revolution, using art to build the sort of society I myself envisioned.

While producing art works, illusions appear from time to time due to my mental illness. Every day is a struggle for me.

I would like to try harder to establish my thought and philosophy strongly and to go back to the universe with my love.

A polka-dot has the form of the sun, which is a symbol of the energy of the whole world and our living life, and also the form of the moon, which is calm. Round, soft, colourful, senseless and unknowing. Polka-dots can't stay alone; like the communicative life of people, two or three polka-dots become movement... Polka-dots are a way to infinity.

With just one polka dot, nothing can be achieved. In the universe, there is the sun, the moon, the earth, and hundreds of millions of stars. All of us live in the unfathomable mystery and infinitude of the universe. Pursuing philosophy of the universe through art under such circumstances has led me to what I call stereotypical repetition.

The thought of continually eating something like macaroni, spat out by machinery, fills me with fear and revulsion, so I make macaroni sculptures. I make them and make them and then keep on making them, until I bury myself in the process. I call this 'obliteration.'

I fight pain, anxiety, and fear every day, and the only method I have found that relieves my illness is to keep creating art. I followed the thread of art and somehow discovered a path that would allow me to live.

I want to create a thousand paintings, maybe two thousand paintings, as many as I can draw.

Painting bodies with the patterns of Kusama's hallucinations obliterated their individual selves and returned them to the infinite universe.

I never have a plan of what I am going to draw.

Georgia O'Keeffe proposed that I live with her. She was in New Mexico then, and I wanted to be in New York.

People ask about art and commercialism. I think that if someone tries to sell their work at a high price, that is the wrong way of doing it.

I hope royalty continues forever. This is the thing that can contribute to peace throughout the world.

If there's a cat, I obliterate it by putting polka dot stickers on it. I obliterate a horse by putting polka dot stickers on it. And I obliterated myself by putting the same polka dot stickers on myself.

Polka dots are fabulous.

I have a flood of ideas in my mind. I just follow my vision.

You should create a work that is so valuable it might eventually sell at a high price, but you've got to concentrate on how you create that artwork.

I have done all the work myself, not assistants. That's why I'm in a wheelchair: I've been doing it physically - it's hard labour - throughout my life.

More and more, I think about the role of the arts, and as an artist, I think that it's important that I share the love and peace.

My mother was against me being an artist. She just wanted me to marry a rich man.

Become one with eternity. Become part of your environment. Take off your clothes. Forget yourself. Make love. Self-destruction is the only way to peace.

Every time I have had a problem, I have confronted it with the ax of art.

I am just another dot in the world

I want to become more famous, even more famous.

If it were not for art, I would have killed myself a long time ago,

More and more I think about the role of the arts, and as an artist, I think that it's important that I share the love and peace,

My art originates from hallucinations only I can see. I translate the hallucinations and obsessional images that plague me into sculptures and paintings. All my works in pastels are the products of obsessional neurosis and are therefore inextricably connected to my disease. I create pieces even when I don't see hallucinations, though.

My life is a dot lost among thousands of other dots.