We are actually living in a million parallel realities every single minute.
Marina Abramovic

If you're a baker, making bread, you're a baker. If you make the best bread in the world, you're not an artist, but if you bake the bread in the gallery, you're an artist. So the context makes the difference.
Marina Abramovic

When I was 14, I thought I looked terrible. I wore these typical Slavic shoes with metal bottoms so you could always hear me coming and this really ugly princess skirt and blouse with the top button closed. I had a boy haircut, a baby face covered with pimples, and a really big nose.
Marina Abramovic

You see, what is my purpose of performance artist is to stage certain difficulties and stage the fear the primordial fear of pain, of dying, all of which we have in our lives, and then stage them in front of audience and go through them and tell the audience, 'I'm your mirror; if I can do this in my life, you can do it in yours.'
Marina Abramovic

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 just by changing your breathing.
Marina Abramovic

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.
Marina Abramovic

I had a very difficult relationship with my mother. She used to wake me up in the middle of the night if I wasn't sleeping straight and was messing up the sheets. Now when I stay in hotels I sleep so straight they don't even think I've used the bed.
Marina Abramovic

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.
Marina Abramovic

We are used to cleaning the outside house, but the most important house to clean is yourself - your own house - which we never do.
Marina Abramovic

People ask why there are so few female artists who succeed. It's because women are not ready to sacrifice as much as men. Women want a man, they want a family, they want to have children, they want to be loved, and to be an artist. And they can't; it's impossible.
Marina Abramovic

People have so much pain inside them that they're not even aware of.
Marina Abramovic

Performance has to be mainstream art. This is what I'm fighting for.
Marina Abramovic

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

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

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

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.
Marina Abramovic

In theater, blood is ketchup; in performance, everything's real.
Marina Abramovic

I notice if I'm too fat or if I'm too ugly or there's skin hanging or whatever. When my clothes start not fitting, I get really self-conscious about what I eat.
Marina Abramovic

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.
Marina Abramovic

Happiness comes from the full understanding of your own being.
Marina Abramovic

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.
Marina Abramovic

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.
Marina Abramovic

It's very important that young artists push boundaries, because sometimes you have this urge to do something - like the impulsive and dangerous urges I had as a child - and if you don't follow through with it you might miss out on a developmental experience.
Marina Abramovic

When you have a nonverbal conversation with a total stranger, then he can't cover himself with words, he can't create a wall.
Marina Abramovic

You know I very much respect Yvonne Rainer, she is very important - in American dance, the entire development of modern dance, and creating a wonderful physical language.
Marina Abramovic

You know, James Franco is one of the most interesting figures because he has no rules. He breaks all the borders.
Marina Abramovic