Marina Abramovic

People have so much pain inside them that they__e not even aware of.

We always project into the future or reflect in the past, but we are so little in the present.

The big problem of our modern society is that we feel that we are separated from the nature. But it's just the opposite. We are interrelated and our DNA is the same. And only when human beings understand that, the nature will not be obstacle.

The function of the artist in a disturbed society is to give awareness of the universe, to ask the right questions, and to elevate the mind.

People put so much effort into starting a relationship and so little effort into ending one.

Because of technology, we don't develop telepathy. We don't use telepathy, but use, you know, the mobile phones. Why?

Today, our attention is less than the television advertisement. We're looking at six or seven problems constantly. We're living in the disturbed societies of cities. I think modern technology is one of the worst things human beings have invented.

I was friends with Susan Sontag the last four years of her life. She had this amazing charisma and so much energy, but she had a sad little funeral in Montparnasse in Paris. It was rainy. It was all wrong. And I was thinking, 'God, she loved life so much.'

We make such terrible mistakes with visual choices about beauty.

If you see a Renaissance body, this is completely ugly in this time. Everybody has to be skinny. But the Renaissance body with incredible flow of the meat everywhere, it was beauty.

I believe so much in the power of performance I don't want to convince people. I want them to experience it and come away convinced on their own.

My mother and father had a terrible marriage. They celebrated their wedding anniversary one year with their friends. Why did they celebrate? Maybe because they had lasted so many years without killing each other.

Time is an illusion. Time only exists when we think about the past and the future. Time doesn't exist in the present here and now.

I am obsessive always, even as a child. On one side is this strict orthodox religion, on the other is communism, and I am this little girl pulled between the two. It makes me who I am. It turns me into the kind of person that Freud would have a field day with, for sure.

Happiness comes from the full understanding of your own being.

Your ego can become an obstacle to your work. If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.

From the very early stage when I started doing performance art in the '70s, the general attitude - not just me, but also my colleagues - was that there should not be any documentation, that the performance itself is artwork and there should be no documentation.

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