Bruce Nauman Quotes

If you really want to do it, you do it. There are no excuses.

A good teacher is like a good artist. They go right to the most difficult part of whatever's going on.

The true artist helps the world by revealing mystic truths.

If I was an artist, and I was in the studio, then whatever I was doing in the studio must be art.

In art, the only one who really knows whether what you've done is honest is the artist.

What I am really concerned about is what art is supposed to be - and can become.

Did you stop because it was good enough, or could have done more - but then maybe ruined it too? Sometimes you finish because you've gone too far.

Learn to recognise when you need to know something.

If you choose the wrong questions and you proceed, you still get a result, but it's not interesting.

My videos always involve some idea of a human being in a unusual situation-and what happens.

It's interesting when you make things or do things that open up the possibilities for making more things, or different kinds of things.

I'll talk. You'll listen.

And I don't have any specific steps to take because I don't start the same way every time. But there is a knowing when it's enough and you can leave it alone.

Generalised anger and frustration is something that gets you in the studio, and gets you to work - though it's not necessarily evident in anything that's finished.

I don't like to think about being an influence. It's embarrassing.

And sometimes the question that you pose or the project that you start yourself turns into something else, you know, but at least it gets you started.

I thought I might have to give up art, but I couldn't think of anything else to do.

And the part about being a professional artist is that you can tell, and you can do it over again, even if you can't say how you got there exactly.

But if you can find that spot - I suppose it's like running - I used to be a swimmer and swim laps, and you just have to be there with what you're doing.

And then what makes the work interesting is if you choose the right questions.

Pete and Repeat were sitting on a wall. Pete fell off. Who was left? Repeat.

One of the factors that still keeps me in the studio is that every so often I have to more or less start all over.

I get the feeling that sometimes the ideas work very well when you're doing them in the studio alone.

Sometimes I just have a few people over to see the new work, and I think it works better than in a museum situation, where the public is just presented with a large area.

I like to combine different aspects in my work, to cover different areas, but I do see them as being separate.

It's just strange to think about...whether I'll be an artist or what I'll be doing.