Louise Bourgeois Quotes

Art is restoration: the idea is to repair the damages that are inflicted in life, to make something that is fragmented - which is what fear and anxiety do to a person - into something whole.

Tell your own story, and you will be interesting.

One must accept the fact that others don’t see what you do.

In my sculpture, it's not an image I am seeking, it's not an idea. My goal is to re-live a past emotion. My art is an exorcism, and beauty is something I never talk about.

A work of art doesn't have to be explained. If you do not have any feeling about this, I cannot explain it to you. If this doesn't touch you, I have failed.

I have been to hell and back, and let me tell you, it was wonderful.

I am not what I am, I am what I do with my hands.

Art is a guarantee of sanity. That is the most important thing I have said.

I came from a family of repairers. The spider is a repairer. If you bash into the web of a spider, she doesn't get mad. She weaves and repairs it.

An artist can show things that other people are terrified of expressing.

I am a searcher... I always was... and I still am... searching for the missing piece.

The feminists took me as a role model, as a mother. It bothers me. I am not interested in being a mother. I am still a girl trying to understand myself.

Horizontality is a desire to give up, to sleep. Verticality is an attempt to escape. Hanging and floating are states of ambivalence.

The subject of pain is the business I am in - to give meaning and shape to frustration and suffering. The existence of pain cannot be denied. I propose no remedies or excuses.

Every day you have to abandon your past or accept it and then, if you cannot accept it, you become a sculptor.

It is not so much where my motivation comes from but rather how it manages to survive.

Art is a way of recognizing oneself.

A work of art doesn't have to be explained.

Don't get the green disease of envy. Don't be fooled by success and money. Don't let anything come between you and your work.

Art is manipulation without intervention.

I do not need the musing of the philosophers to tell me what I am doing. It would be more interesting to let me know why I am doing it.

My childhood has never lost its magic, it has never lost its mystery, and it has never lost its drama.

My art is a form of restoration in terms of my feelings to myself and to others.

I have kept a diary as long as I can remember, and drawings are really another kind of diary.

You must put the essence of what you want to say into a painting. The rest is arbitrary. Chosen with discernment, but chosen, and choice involves elimination.

Clothing is . . . an exercise in memory. It makes me explore the past: how did I feel when I wore that. They are like signposts in the search for the past.

To be an artist, you need to exist in a world of silence.

I always had the fear of being separated and abandoned. The sewing is my attempt to keep things together and make things whole.

My work disturbs people and nobody wants to be disturbed. They are not fully aware of the effect my work has on them, but they know it is disturbing.

Everywhere in the modern world there is neglect, the need to be recognized, which is not satisfied. Art is a way of recognizing oneself, which is why it will always be modern.

My knives are like a tongue - I love, I do not love, I hate. If you don’t love me, I am ready to attack. I am a double-edged knife.

If you flatter me, or if you look at me the right way, I will kill myself to please you. It's very painful to be an overachiever.

Art is a guarantee of sanity.

It is a great privilege to be able to work with, and I suppose work off, my feelings through sculpture.

Sometimes it is necessary to make a confrontation-and I like that.

If you are resentful, you keep the thing alive. So the way to go on is to get rid of it, in order to forgive in order to forget.

Once I was beset by anxiety but I pushed the fear away by studying the sky, determining when the moon would come out and where the sun would appear in the morning.

My life has been regulated by insomnia.

Look at it this way - a totem pole is just a decorated tree. My work is a confessional.

To express your emotions, you have to be very loose and receptive. The unconscious will come to you if you have that gift that artists have. I only know if Im inspired by the results.

It is not a torment to be an artist. It is a privilege.

Surrealism is anathema for me. Because the surrealists made a joke of everything. And I consider life a tragedy.

The spider is an animal who eats mosquitoes. That's why I love the spider - it is the only way we have to deal with these insects.

Everyone should have the right to marry. To make a commitment to love someone forever is a beautiful thing.

I found in rules of mathematics a peace and a trust that I could not place in human beings. This sublimation was total and remained total.

For me, sculpture is the body. My body is my sculpture.

Artists are born not made. There's nothing you can do for them.

I was raised a Catholic. But I am not religious. In my work, I am interested in real flesh and blood.

I was a runaway girl from France who married an American and moved to New York City. Im not sure I would have continued as an artist had I remained in Paris because of the family setup.

I dont watch TV. I dont use a computer, a fax or a cellphone.