Andy Warhol Quotations

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

Art is what you can get away with.

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

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

Human beings are born solitary, but everywhere they are in chains - daisy chains - of interactivity. Social actions are makeshift forms, often courageous, sometimes ridiculous, always strange. And in a way, every social action is a negotiation, a compromise between 'his,' 'her' or 'their' wish and yours.

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

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

I used to have the same lunch every day, for 20 years, I guess, the same thing over and over again.

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

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

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

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

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

We live in an age when the traditional great subjects - the human form, the landscape, even newer traditions such as abstract expressionism - are daily devalued by commercial art.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

My fascination with letting images repeat and repeat - or in film's case 'run on' - manifests my belief that we spend much of our lives seeing without observing.

Since I was shot, everything is such a dream to me. Like I don't know whether I'm alive or whether I died. I wasn't afraid before. And having been dead once, I shouldn't feel fear. But I am afraid. I don't understand why.

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

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

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

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. 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.'

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.

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.

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

If you're not trying to be real, you don't have to get it right. That's art.

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.

If you wear a wig, everybody notices. But if you then dye the wig, people notice the dye.

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.

Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.

I always hear myself saying, 'She's a beauty!' or 'He's a beauty!' or 'What a beauty!' but I never know what I'm talking about.

I think it would be terrific if everybody was alike.

Fantasy love is much better than Reality Love.

People sometimes say the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually, it's the way things happen to you in life that's unreal.

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.

Now and then, someone would accuse me of being evil - of letting people destroy themselves while I watched, just so I could film them and tape-record them. But I didn't think of myself as evil - just realistic.

In the future, everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.

I want to die with my blue jeans on.

I just happen to like ordinary things. When I paint them, I don't try to make them extraordinary. I just try to paint them ordinary-ordina ry.

I think the first photograph I did was a ballplayer. It was a way of showing action or something.

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

I'll bet there are a lot of artists that nobody hears about who just make more money than anybody. The people that do all the sculptures and paintings for big building construction. We never hear about them, but they make more money than anybody.

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

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

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.'

When you think about it, department stores are kind of like museums.

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

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.

I went to vote once, but I got too scared. I couldn't decide whom to vote for.

I think kids should go to high school until they're 30. No, really, because people are staying younger now and there's nothing to do. If you stayed longer, then it would be really great.

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

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

I always like to see if the art across the street is better than mine.

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

I'm for mechanical art. When I took up silk screening, it was to more fully exploit the preconceived image through the commercial techniques of multiple reproduction.

Voyeurism is a director's job description. It's an artist's, too.

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.

I've been invited to the White House about five times. I think the greatest thing would be if they actually invited everybody to the White House every night... they'd just take about 500 people a night. Everybody would just love this country because it's so thrilling to go there. It really is.

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

So many people seem to prefer my silver-screenings of movie stars to the rest of my work. It must be the subject matter that attracts them, because my death and violence paintings are just as good.

I think they should have movies in restaurants. I can't believe that so many people get together just to sit there. It's so abstract... isn't it abstract? What are these people sitting here watching?

The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.

I think Chris Burden is terrific. I really do.

I like to work when I'm not working - do something that may not be considered work, but to me it's work. Getting exercise by going to the grocery store.

many in the cast portrayed their parts as if in a stupor from marijuana, drugs or alcohol.

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.

I think that throughout the show that there are many things that could be picked up on in terms of fashion and in terms of style. Whether it be the drawings from the 1950s or the dresses from

The day will come when everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.

The idea of America is so wonderful because the more equal something is, the more American it is

When the Woolworth's-Hot-Fudge-Sundae switch goes on, then I know I really have something.

The wide multitude wanted to seem contrarian. It meant that this type of nonconformism had to be mass-produced.

Fashion wasn't what you wore someplace anymore; it was the whole reason for going.

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

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

There should be a course in first grade on love.

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.

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.

I've always thought that the President could do so much here to help change images. If the President would go into a public bathroom in the Capitol, and have the TV cameras film him cleaning the toilets and saying 'Why not? Somebody's got to do it!' then that would do so much for the morale of the people who do the wonderful job of keeping the toilets clean. I mean, it is a wonderful thing that they're doing.

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.

Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.

You need to let the little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you.

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

I wake up every morning. I open my eyes and think: here we go again.

As soon as you stop wanting something you get it. I've found that to be absolutely axiomatic.

I smoke pot because I want to go to heaven before I die

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.

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.

I think everybody should like everybody.

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

Everybody must have a fantasy.

Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery. People are working every minute. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.

I’m really afraid to feel happy because it never lasts

I am a deeply superficial person.

When I think about what sort of person I would most like to have on a retainer, I think it would be a boss. A boss who could tell me what to do, because that makes everything easy when you're working.

I think anybody can take a good picture. My idea of a good picture is one that's in focus and of a famous person doing something unfamous. It's being in the right place at the wrong time.

The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting