Andy Warhol Quotes

People some times say that the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually its the way things happen to you in real life thats unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, its like watching television. You don't feel anything.

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

(You wouldn't believe the number of people who hang the electric chair painting in the homes, especially if the colour of the canvas matches the curtains.)

I remembered I had tickets that Susan Blond gave me to the rock kid who ate the heads off bats, Ozzy Osbourne,...

Edward Lucie-Smith: Why is it more of a pleasure to do 30 or 40 pictures than to do just one?
Andy Warhol: Then I can, uh, listen to my soundabout which looks just like the thing that I'm wearing now, and you can listen to opera and stuff like that.
Edward Lucie-Smith: Does that mean you don't have to think when you're painting?
Andy Warhol: No, you can listen to really good music.
Edward Lucie-Smith: So, what, painting is an excuse to listen to really good music?
Andy Warhol: Oh, yeah.

People are sleeping in pyramid-shaped spaces a lot now because they think it will keep them young and vital and stop the aging process. I’m not worried about that because I have my wings. However, my ideal

I know a girl who just looks at her face in the medicine cabinet mirror and never looks below her shoulders, and she's four or five hundred pounds but she doesn't see all that, she just sees a beautiful face and therefore she thinks she's a beauty. And therefore, I think she's a beauty, too, because I usually accept people on the basis of their self-images, because their self-images have more to do with the way they think than their objective-images do.

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 see everything that way, the surface of things, a kind of mental Braille. I just pass my hands over the surface of things.

Why do people think artists are special? It's just another job.

Andy Warhol: I think everybody should like everybody.
Gene Swenson: Is that what Pop Art is all about?
Andy Warhol: Yes, it's liking things.

A: I like your apartment.
B: It's nice, but it's only big enough for one person – or two people who are very close.
A: You know two people who are very close?

An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he - for some reason - thinks it would be a good idea to give them.

Before I was shot [June, 1968], I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there - I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. People sometimes say that the way things happen in the movies is unreal, but actually it's the way things happen to you in life that's unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television - you don't feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it's all television.

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

Interviewer: “Andy do you feel that the public has insulted your art?”
Andy Warhol: “Uh no.”
I: “Why not?”
AW: “Uh well I hadn’t thought about it.”
I: “It doesn’t bother you at all then?”
AW: “Uh no.”
I: “Well do you think that they have shown a lack of appreciation for what pop art means?”
AW: “Uh no.”
I: “Andy do you think that pop art has sort of reached the point where it’s becoming repetitious now?”
AW: “Uh yes.”
I: “Do you think it should break away from being pop art?”
AW: “Uh no.”
I: “Are you just going to carry on?”
AW: “Uh yes.