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.

We make such terrible mistakes with visual choices about beauty.

Happiness is such a good state, it doesn’t need to be creative. You’re not creative from happiness, you’re just happy. You’re creative when you’re miserable and depressed. You find the key to transform things. Happiness...

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...

Americans don’t like European movies.

Happiness comes from the full understanding of your own being.

I’m interested in asking: ‘What does feminine energy mean?’ I don’t have answers – I just have questions and interesting examples.

I want to dominate the man’s world.

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

I don’t do husbands. I don’t do children.

With classical ballet you are literally injuring yourself.

For me, the most difficult piece is the one I’m about to make.

Most of the time, the artists are not supposed to wear the fashion. It is always seen as a vanity. But I think I don’t need to prove anything in my life. I can honestly...

In America, everyone’s always hiding their age.

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...

In theater, blood is ketchup; in performance, everything’s real.

I’m interested in utopian communities of the past. Many of them didn’t survive and I’m examining closely the reasons they failed.

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...

In every ancient culture, there are rituals to mortify the body as a way of understanding that the energy of the soul is indestructible.

My grandmother, when she looked at American movies, she said, ‘They’re all the same. In the first scene somebody shoots somebody and then everybody makes phone calls.’

All my inspiration comes from life. That’s how it never stops, in a way.

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.

In my work I have complete control, but about my life, I don’t want to.

When Lady Gaga says I am her inspiration, you reach kids between 12 and 18. Now I am like a brand – jeans, Coca-Cola.

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

If you do performance and music, it’s not performance as music.

To really change the way society thinks, you have to give your entire being to it until there’s nothing left.

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

You know, art is very emotional business. But mostly it becomes not emotional, the fabric of commodity. It becomes business. It becomes so many different things. Because we forgot there was emotions involved.

I am only interested in the ideas that become obsessive and make me feel uneasy. The ideas that I’m afraid of.

The world doesn’t need an artist who shows reality as it is.

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

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.

The most revolutionary ideas are not sellable, but only mind-changing.

One of the most wonderful things for me is to watch somebody else perform, where I am the audience – I love this more than ever.

Woody Allen has a wonderful line: ‘Today I’m a star. What will I be tomorrow? A black hole?’ That’s very important to know – that you have the moment, then you lose the moment. You...

I am not a therapist. I am not a spiritual leader. These elements are in the art: it is therapeutic, spiritual, social and political – everything. It has many layers. But art has to have...

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.

Being an artist is not easy – I have always said that to the students I have taught over the years. It’s a huge sacrifice.

Artists should never think of themselves as an idol. Fame is a side effect of one’s work.

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...

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.

People in New York never have time for anything.