MARINA ABRAMOVIĆ

“The hardest thing is to do something which is close to nothing because it is demanding all of you.”

“Because in the end you are really alone, whatever you do.”

“When I was young it was impossible for me to talk to people. Now I can stand in front of three thousand people without any notes, any preconception of what I’m going to say, even without visual material, and I can look at everyone in the audience and talk for two hour...

“Sometimes people are ashamed to talk about these things, but I know so many people who would never throw away their old shitty T-shirts or pullovers that are falling apart because of the comfort they get from those clothes. Everybody is vulnerable.”

“What you’re doing is not important. What is really important is the state of mind from which you do it. Performance”

“I realized that this is the theme I return to constantly - I'm always trying to prove to everyone that I can go it alone, that I can survive, that I don't need anybody.”

“Then I woke up and the reality of the dream was stronger than the reality of the day.”

“Some couples buy pots and pans when they move in together. Ulay and I began planning how to make art together.”

“... you can tell the most terrible truths if you first open the human heart with humor.”

“People have so much pain inside them that they’re not even aware of.”

“Travelling makes a person young because he doesn't get time to get old.”

“The hardest thing to do is something that is close to nothing.”

“If you experiment, you have to fail. By definition, experimenting means going to territory where you’ve never been, where failure is very possible. How can you know you’re going to succeed? Having the courage to face the unknown is so important.

“To control the breathing is to control the mind. With different patterns of breathing, you can fall in love, you can hate someone, you can feel the whole spectrum of feelings by changing your breathing.”

“If you’re a woman, it’s almost impossible to establish a relationship. You’re too much for everybody. It’s too much. The woman always has to play this role of being fragile and dependent. And if you’re not, they’are fascinated by you, but only for a little while. And ...

“Human beings are afraid of very simple things: we fear suffering, we fear mortality. What I was doing in Rhythm 0—as in all my other performances—was staging these fears for the audience: using their energy to push my body as far as possible. In the process, I liberat...