Andy Warhol Quotes

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


2. An artist is somebody who produces things that people don't need to have.


3. Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.

4. Fantasy love is much better than reality love. Never doing it is very exciting. The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.

5. Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.

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

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



8. I like boring things. 


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

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

11. 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. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.

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

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

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




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

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

17. Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.

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

19. Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there - I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television.

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

21. Sex is more exciting on the screen and between the pages than between the sheets.







22. I am a deeply superficial person.

23. 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.

24. 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.

25. It would be very glamorous to be reincarnated as a great big ring on Liz Taylor's finger.

26. I'm bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is "In 15 minutes everybody will be famous."

27. 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.

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

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

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

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

32. I used to think that everything was just being funny but now I don't know. I mean, how can you tell?

33. Since people are going to be living longer and getting older, they'll just have to learn how to be babies longer.

34. What's great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest.

35. 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.

36. Once you "got" Pop, you could never see a sign again the same way again. And once you thought Pop, you could never see America the same way again.

37. The most exciting thing is not doing it. If you fall in love with someone and never do it, it's much more exciting.

38. 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."

39. People need to be made more aware of the need to work at learning how to live because life is so quick and sometimes it goes away too quickly.

40. 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.

41. Land really is the best art.

42. People should fall in love with their eyes closed.

43. When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can't make them change if they don't want to, just like when they do want to, you can't stop them.





44. Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say: So what. That's one of my favorite things to say. So what.

45. Everything has its beauty but not everyone sees it.

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

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

48. I think everybody should be nice to everybody.

49. 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.

50. It’s not what you are that counts, it’s what they think you are.

51. It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.

52. Beauty is a sign of intelligence.

53. People sometimes say that the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually, it's the way things happen to you in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like you're watching television - you don't feel anything.

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

55. I like to be the right thing in the wrong place and the wrong thing in the right place. Being the right thing in the wrong place and the wrong thing in the right place is worth it because something interesting always happens.

56. Every song has a memory; every song has the ability to make or break your heart, shut down the heart, and open the eyes.

57. And your own life while it's happening to you never has any atmosphere until it's a memory.

58. I always think about what it means to wear eyeglasses. When you get used to glasses you don't know how far you could really see. I think about all the people before eyeglasses were invented. It must have been weird because everyone was seeing in different ways according to how bad their eyes were. Now, eyeglasses standardize everyone's vision to 20-20. That's an example of everyone becoming more alike. Everyone could be seeing at different levels if it weren't for glasses.

59. As soon as you stop wanting something, you get it.

60. What's great about this country is 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 can 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.

61. But I always say, one's company, two's a crowd, and three's a party.

62. The mystery was gone but the amazement was just starting.

63. I believe in low lights and trick mirrors.

64. Everyone winds up kissing the wrong person goodnight.

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

66. The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.

67. If everyone isn't beautiful, then no one is.

68. You have to do stuff that average people don't understand because those are the only good things.

69. Most people in America think Art is a man's name.

70. There are beautiful sounds in rock. Very lazy, dreamlike noises. You can forget about the lyrics in most songs. Just dig the noise, and you've got your sound...We're musical primitives.


71. James Dean was the damaged but beautiful soul of our time.

72. Actually, I jade very quickly. Once is usually enough. Either once only, or every day. If you do something once it’s exciting, and if you do it every day it’s exciting. But if you do it, say, twice or just almost every day, it’s not good any more.

73. Everybody has a different idea of love. One girl I know said: "I knew he loved me when de didn't come in my mouth".

74. I can never get over when you're on the beach how beautiful the sand looks and the water washes it away and straightens it up and the trees and the grass all look great.

75. People's fantasies are what give them problems. If you didn't have fantasies you wouldn't have problems because you'd just take whatever was there.

76. At the times in my life when I was feeling the most gregarious and looking for bosom friendships, I couldn't find any takers, so that exactly when I was alone was when I felt the most like not being alone... I became a loner in my own mind... I decided I'd rather be alone.

77. The girls in California were probably prettier in a standard sense than the New York girls - blonder and in better health, I guess; but I still preferred the way the girls in New York looked - stranger and more neurotic (a girl always looked more beautiful and fragile when she was about to have a nervous breakdown).

78. Why do people spend their time being sad when they could be happy?

79. Everybody has their own America, and then they have pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can’t see…So the fantasy corners of America…you’ve pieced them together from scenes in movies and music and lines from books. And you live in your dream America that you’ve custom-made from art and schmaltz and emotions just as much as you live in your real one.

80. Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say: "So what."
"My mother didn't love me." So what.
"My husband won't ball me. So what.
"I'm a success but I'm still alone." So what.
I don't know how I made it through all the years before I learned how to do that trick. It took a long time for me to learn it, but once you do, you never forget.

81. When I look around today, the biggest anachronism I see is pregnancy. I just can't believe that people are still pregnant.

82. I just do art because I’m ugly and there’s nothing else for me to do.

83. Don't think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it's good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.

84. Some people spend their entire lives thinking about one particular famous person. They pick one person who's famous, and they dwell on him or her. They devote almost their entire consciousness to thinking about this person they've never even met, or maybe met once. If you ask any famous person about the kind of mail they get, you'll find that almost every one of them has at least one person who's obsessed with them and writes constantly. It feels so strange to think that someone is spending their whole time thinking about you.

85. Sex is the biggest nothing of all time.

86. You have to be willing to get happy about nothing.

87. I never wanted to be a painter; I wanted to be a tap dancer.

88. So today if you see a person who looks like your teenage fantasy walking down the street, it's probably not your fantasy, but someone who had the same fantasy as you and decided instead of getting it or being it, to look like it, and so he went to the store and bought the look that you both like.

89. The nicer I am, the more people think I'm lying.

90. The world fascinates me.

91. I think pot should be legal. I don’t smoke it, but I like the smell of it.

92. 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.
ES: What, and don't make you talk?
AW: Yeah, yes, that's a really nice person.

93. Space is all one space and thought is all one thought, but my mind divides its spaces into spaces into spaces and thoughts into thoughts into thoughts. Like a large condominium. Occasionally I think about the one Space and the one Thought, but usually I don't. Usually I think about my condominium.

94. Interviewer: "Andy do you feel that the public has insulted your art?"
Andy Warhol: "Uh no."
I: "Why not?"
AW: "Uh well I hadn’t thought about it."
I: "It doesn’t bother you at all then?"
AW: "Uh no."
I: "Andy do you think that pop art has sort of reached the point where it’s becoming repetitious now?"
AW: "Uh yes."
I: "Do you think it should break away from being pop art?"
AW: "Uh no."
I: "Are you just going to carry on?"
AW: "Uh yes."

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

96. Security breeds stagnation.

97. 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.

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