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

First of all, to do performance art, you really have to give 100 percent. I only know that I have to give 100 percent and then what happens, happens.

I didn’t get paid for performances most of my life. If I did, I would be billionaire now, and I’m not.

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...

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

So many artists say they’re not aware of audience. For me is unbelievable.

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

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.

Why am I not feminist? Maybe because I come from a country where my mother ruled my life. I never felt in any way that I couldn’t achieve what I want.

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...

An artist should not fall in love with another artist.

A powerful performance will transform everyone in the room.

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...

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

The mind is crazy thing. To be focused is the most difficult thing.

When people ask me where I am from I never say, ‘Serbia.’ I always say, ‘I come from a country that no longer exists.’

You know, everyone is always talking about plastic surgery, or the technology, what to do. I really think it’s important to help yourself with the technology if you want to feel better, but I am...

I am very clear that I am not a feminist. It puts you into a category and I don’t like that.

Performance has to be mainstream art. This is what I’m fighting for.

For me, performance is a holy ground. When I perform, I really step into a different state of consciousness.

Even now, I have traces of the good little girl. When I am not performing, for instance, I am really very quiet and ordinary.

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

Artists can do whatever they want!

The only theatre I do is my own. Somehow, my life is the only life that I can play.

I used to have a recurring dream where I was at a party in a country house, surrounded by the same people each evening. Everyone would be singing and dancing and after a while I...

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...

In real life, you just work for the ordinary self, but in the front of audience you become the superself. That’s a completely different thing.

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.

From the moment you are born, you could die. I think as an artist it is important to meditate on that.

Once you live in New York, you can’t live anywhere else. Living in Paris is like going in slow motion. It’s so bourgeois. I get so bored.

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...

Every party is the same, too many people, too little food, and you have to wait around. I’m extremely bored with parties.

The public is in need of experiences that are not just voyeuristic. Our society is in a mess of losing its spiritual centre.

You can’t choreograph death, but you can choreograph your funeral.

I really don’t like art where you need to know so much theory to understand. If the theory is removed, it doesn’t do anything. That means that this work is an illustration of theory, and...

An artist has to look at the future, to see what we can do better.

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...

I don’t know anything about the afterlife because I haven’t been there yet.

I believe that life is shorter; that is why we have to make experience longer.

You know how you feel somebody looking at you, and you turn, and somebody actually is? It’s the same at an art gallery. You’re looking at one portrait, turn around, and there is a work...

I hate studio. For me, studio is a trap to overproduce and repeat yourself. It is a habit that leads to art pollution.

Theater is something that as a performance artist you have to hate.

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

I really think there’s no difference between an art piece made by a man and one made by a woman. Is it a good art piece or a bad art piece? Of course, if you’re...

Cancer is an emotional disease.

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.

I hate kitchens. I don’t understand these enormous American kitchens that take up half the living room and then they just order pizza.

I think 21st century should be art without objects.

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

I believe the artist has an obligation to society.