72 Andy Warhol Quotes

Andy Warhol quotes

1. In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.

2. Andy Warhol: I think everybody should like everybody. Gene Swenson: Is that what Pop Art is all about? Andy Warhol: Yes, it's liking things.

3. It's the place where my prediction from the sixties finally came true: 'In the future everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.' I'm bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is, 'In fifteen minutes everybody will be famous.'

4. 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. Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery. People are working every minute. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.

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

6. Edward Smith: Would you like to see your pictures on as many walls as possible, then? Andy Warhol: Uh, no, I like them in closets.

7. Edward Smith: Why is it more of a pleasure to do 30 or 40 pictures than to do just one? Andy Warhol: Then I can, uh, listen to my soundabout which looks just like the thing that I'm wearing now, and you can listen to opera and stuff like that. Edward Smith: Does that mean you don't have to think when you're painting? Andy Warhol: No, you can listen to really good music. Edward Smith: So, what, painting is an excuse to listen to really good music? Andy Warhol: Oh, yeah.

8. 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. Edward Smith: What, and don't make you talk? Andy Warhol: Yeah, yes, that's a really nice person. Edward Smith: [laughs] Thank you, Andy.

9. The idea is not to live forever, it is to create something that will.

10. you take some chocolate ... and you take two pieces of bread ... and you put the candy in the middle and you make a sandwich of it. and that would be a cake.

11. An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he, for some reason, thinks it would be a good idea to give them.

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

13. During the 1960s, I think, people forgot what emotions were supposed to be. And I don't think they've ever remembered.

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

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

16. I always wished I had died, and I still wish that, because I could have gotten the whole thing over with.

17. I am a deeply superficial person.

18. I believe in low lights and trick mirrors.

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

20. I keep reading about this, erm, Indian guy that turns out like three or four thousand pictures a minute...or maybe it's a day.

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

22. I just think any picture you take is a good picture.

23. I like boring things.

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

25. 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.

26. I never think that people die. They just go to department stores.

27. I never read. I just look at pictures.

28. 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'.

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

30. I think it would be so great if more people took up silk screening,so that no one would know whether my picture was mine or somebody else.

31. I went to China, I didn't want to go, and I went to see the Great Wall. You know, you read about it for years. And actually it was great. It was really, really, really great.

32. 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.

33. I'll endorse with my name any of the following; clothing AC-DC, cigarettes, small tapes, sound equipment, ROCK N' ROLL RECORDS, anything, film, and film equipment, Food, Helium, Whips, MONEY!!

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

35. 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.

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

37. 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.

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

39. It doesn't matter if it displays Mona Lisa, a Banana or Hans Rittman's glasses - the fact is it must be pop!

40. 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.

41. People should fall in love with their eyes closed. Just close your eyes. Don't look and it's magic.

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

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

44. People are only glamorous if you don't see them. Like the movies used to make people years ago. There is something about people on screen that makes them so special; when you see them in person, they are so different and the whole illusion is gone.

45. The most beautiful thing in Tokyo is McDonald's. The most beautiful thing in Stockholm is McDonald's. Peking and Moscow don't have anything beautiful yet.

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

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

48. What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it...........

49. Why do people think artists are special? It's just another job.

50. Art is what you can get away with.

51. I don't know where the artificial stops and the real starts.

52. No director in human history has ever made or will ever make worse movies. Warhol makes Ed Wood look like Ingmar Bergman.

1. Everybody winds up kissing the wrong person good-night.

2. Everybody winds up kissing the wrong person goodnight.

3. I’m really afraid to feel happy because it never lasts

4. Im really afraid to feel happy because it never lasts

5. In some circles where very heavy people think they have very heavy brains, words like "charming" and "clever" and "pretty" are all put-downs; all the lighter things in life, which are the most important things, are put down.

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

7. Years later, I figured out why he (Ivan Karp) was such a successful art dealer-this may sound strange, but I believe it was because art was his second love. He seemed to love literature more, and he put the serious side of his nature into that...Some people are even better at their second love than their first, maybe because when they care too much, it freezes them, but knowing there's something they'd rather be doing gives them a certain freedom.

8. 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.'

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

10. I can't give parties. It's so hard. When I want to call somebody up for dinner they think I'm using them or something. I just can't stand it.

11. Sometimes the little times you don't think are anything while they're happening turn out to be what marks a whole period of your life.

12. I never fall apart, because I never fall together.

13. 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.

14. 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.

15. Whenever I’m interested in something, I know the timing’s off, because I’m always interested in the right thing at the wrong time. I should just be getting interested after I’m not interested any more.

16. If there's ever a problem, I film it and it's no longer a problem. It's a film.

17. A picture means I know where I was every minute. That's why I take pictures. It's a visual diary.

18. 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.

19. I used to drink Coke all the time. It was so good. It gives you a lot of energy.

20. I'm seeking out a new way to live and if it's surfing, that's the way I'll do it. I'll be a surfer for the rest of my life.