Yoko Ono Art Quotations

Controversy is part of the nature of art and creativity.

Performance art is going to be the future. Plays on Broadway are so restricted. But performance art is like haikus, just one line thing. And it's more casual but more interesting.

We are all dreamers creating the next world, the next beautiful world for ourselves and for our children.

I thought art was a verb, rather than a noun.

There is an incredible love in creating art unless somebody is saying, 'Hey, let's just make money,' because it doesn't work when you do it that way. If you are aiming for that, forget it.

Sound as medium has an incredible elasticity. So, of course, it is tempting for artists of other fields to try something with sounds. Why not? We are living in the age when there is no limit in gathering all forms of art and music to mix it together if you so desire.

Art is like breathing for me. If I don't do it, I start to choke.

My career? I never think of it as a 'career.' Art and music and all those things that I'm creating are just part of me.

Art is a mind-game that we do to make our lives easier. If it isn't for that, it becomes superfluous.

It's a waste to not say anything with art.

Every drop in the ocean counts.

I really feel that artists or musicians are controversial people. Controversy is part of the nature of art and creativity. If people are not doing that, they're not artists - they're artisans.

Sometimes I have compared myself with a scientist or something: when you discover something and you don't expect the whole world to understand it. I always thought I was doing that kind of activity, in art and in music too.

But only art and music have the power to bring peace.

Art for me is like breathing.

The first idea, the first art piece I ever did, was when I was four. I cut the seed of a pear in half and the seed of an apple in half in put those two halves together and planted the seed, hoping a very strange tree might grow. And I never stopped.

Artists are going to be the metronome of this society.

I never went to art school and I never thought of going to an art school. It was just a way of manifesting these ideas I had. Ideas came to me that I needed to express.

I never thought, "I'm going to be an artist". When I actually began to become successful in the art world I made it a point to say, 'I am a dilettante, I am not a professional artist", which is true.

Art is a way of survival.

If I hear dance music, my body starts to move. Whatever the dance music is, I can't help it. With all that, I still felt, well, rock is a little higher art, but it wasn't. Right now, because I have so much experience with dance charts, I started to realize that it's incredible art. This is going to be known one day as high art.

The art world was not initially really accepting my kind of work. I was ahead of my time.

Everybody's an artist. Everybody's God. It's just that they're inhibited. I believe in people so much that if the whole of civilization is burned so we don't have any memory of it, even then people will start to build their own art. It is a necessity -- a function. We don't need history.

Art is an effort to make you walk a half an inch above ground.

Everybody's an artist. Everybody's God. It's just that they're inhibited.

Great Art is Great because it inspired you greatly. If it didn't, no matter what the critics, the museums and the galleries say, it's not great art for you.

I realized that an artist seeking to tell the truth in her art takes great courage. I recognize the courage required to bring children together from Israeli and Palestinian communities to find commonality in music as a very powerful and effective beginning towards Peace.

Art is my life and my life is art.

Artists are magicians and I definitely think John Lennon was a Wizard.

Art for me is like breathing. When I stop breathing, what happens?

There's a big difference between sending your art in a statement or something like that, and sending yourself there. When you send yourself somewhere, then you are sharing your information uncontrollably - like all yourself.