Andy Warhol Quotes

(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.)

(You wouldn't believe how many people will hang a picture of an electric chair in their room – especially if the color of the picture matches the curtains.)

(You wouldn't believe how many people will hang up a picture of an electric chair? especially if it matches the color of their curtains.)

(You'd be surprised who'll hang an electric chair in the living room. Especially if the background matches the drapes.)

You'd be surprised how many people want to hang an electric chair on their living-room wall. Specially if the background color matches the drapes.

The name [Pop] sounds so awful. Dada must have something to do with Pop. it's so funny, the names are really synonyms. Does anyone know what they're supposed to mean or have to do with, those names? Johns and Rauschenberg, Neo-Dada for all those years, and everyone calling them derivative and unable to transform the things they use, are now called progenitors of Pop. It's funny the way things change. I think John Cage has been very influential, and Merce Cunningham too, I think.. ..History books are being rewritten all the time.

I started those [the 'Elisabeth Taylor' pictures, Warhol made from a publicity photo of her 1960 film BUtterfield 8 a long time ago when she was so sick and everybody said she was going to die [but she recovered]. Now I'm doing them all over, putting bright colors on her lips and eyes. My next series will be pornographic pictures, they will look blank; when you turn on the black lights, then you will see them - big breast and ... If a cop came in, then you could just flick out the lights or turn to the regular lights. How could you say that was pornography? ...Segal did a sculpture of two people making love, but he cut it all up, I guess because he thought it was too pornographic to be art ... The thing I like about it is that it makes you forget about style and that sort of things; style isn't really important.

I guess it was the big plane crash picture [why Warhol started his 'Death'-series], the front page of a newspaper: '129 DIED'. I was also painting the Marilyns [the Marylin Monroe portraits, Warhol started after her tragic death in 1962] I realized that everything I was doing must have been Death. It was Christmas or Labor Day - a holiday - and every time that you turned on the radio they said something like '4 millions are going to die'. That started it. But when you see a gruesome picture over and over again, it doesn't really have any effect.

We went to see Dr No [first James Bond film, 1962] at Fort-Second Street. It's a fantastic movie, so cool. We walked outside and somebody threw a cherry bomb right in front of us, in this big crowd. And there was blood. I saw blood on people and all over. I felt like I was bleeding all over. I saw in the paper last week that there are more people throwing them - it's just part of the scene - and hurting people. My show in Paris is to be called Death in America. I'll show the Electric-chair pictures and the Dogs in Birmingham and car wrecks and some suicide pictures.

If an artist can't do anymore, then he should just quit; and an artist ought to be able to change his style without feeling bad. I heard that Lichtenstein said he might not be painting comic strips a year of two from now . I think that would be so great, to be able to change styles. And I think that's what's going to happen; that's going to be the whole new scene.

It's hard to be creative and it's also hard not to think what you do is creative or hard not to be called creative because everybody is always talking about that and individuality. Everybody's always creative. And it is so funny when you say things aren't, like the shoe I would draw for an advertisement was called a 'creation', but the drawing of it was not.. .There are millions of actors. They're all pretty good. And how many painters are there? Millions of painters and all pretty good. How can you say one style is better then another. You ought to be able to be an Abstract-expressionist next week, or a Pop artist, or a realist, without feeling you're given up something.

Scripts bore me. It's much more exciting not to know what's going to happen. I don't think that plot is important. If you see a movie of two people talking, you can watch it over and over again without being bored. You get involved – you miss things – you come back to it ... But you can't see the same movie over again if it has a plot because you already know the ending ... Everyone is rich. Everyone is interesting. Years ago, people used to sit looking out of their windows at the street. Or on a park bench. They would stay for hours without being bored although nothing much was going on. This is my favorite theme in movie making – just watching something happening for two hours or so ... I still think it's nice to care about people. And Hollywood movies are uncaring. We're pop people. We took a tour of Universal Studios in Los Angeles and, inside and outside the place, it was very difficult to tell what was real. They're not-real people trying to say something. And we're real people not trying to say anything. I just like everybody and I believe in everything.

Pelé is one of the few who contradicted my theory [...] Instead of 15 minutes of fame, he will have 15 centuries.

:: In fifteen minutes, everyone will be famous.

:: In the future, fifteen people will be famous.