Andy Warhol

“When I think about what sort of person I would most like to have on a retainer, I think it would be a boss. A boss who could tell me what to do, because that makes everything easy when you’re working.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Sometimes something can look beautiful just because it’s different in some way from the other things around it. One red petunia in a window box will look very beautiful if all the rest of them are white, and vice-versa.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I get so tired of painting. I’ve been trying to give it up all the time, if we could just make a living out of movies or the newspaper business or something. It’s so boring, painting the same picture over and over.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Rodeo Drive is a giant butterscotch sundae.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I never think that people die. They just go to department stores.” ~ Andy Warhol

“The teachers liked me. In grade school, they make you copy pictures from books. I think the first one was Robert Louis Stevenson.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Just because people throw it out and don’t have any use for it, doesn’t mean it’s garbage.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Went to Studio 54 where there was a birthday party for the black star on Saturday Night Live who’s just signed to do a movie with Paramount. Eddie Murphy.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Two people kissing always look like fish.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I’ve decided something: Commercial things really do stink. As soon as it becomes commercial for a mass market it really stinks.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Everybody has their own America, and then they have pieces of a fantasy America that they think is out there but they can’t see.” ~ Andy Warhol

“My idea of a good picture is one that’s in focus and of a famous person.” ~ Andy Warhol

“If there’s ever a problem, I film it and it’s no longer a problem. It’s a film.” ~ Andy Warhol

“If I had gone ahead and died ten years ago, I’d probably be a cult figure today.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Everything is beautiful. Pop is everything.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Dying is the most embarrassing thing that can ever happen to you, because someone’s got to take care of all your details.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I wonder if it’s possible to have a love affair that lasts forever.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I learned that you actually have more power when you shut up.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I never fall apart, because I never fall together.” ~ Andy Warhol

“The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I’m afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Pop art is about liking things.” ~ Andy Warhol

“The mystery was gone but the amazement was just starting.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Uptown is for people who have already done something. Downtown is where they’re doing something now. I live uptown but I love downtown.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Making money is art. And working is art. And good business is the best art.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Business Art is the step that comes after Art.” ~ Andy Warhol

“The mosquito is the state bird of New Jersey.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I’d asked around 10 or 15 people for suggestions. Finally one lady friend asked the right question, ‘Well, what do you love most?’ That’s how I started painting money.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Exposure and attention make a work famous – the more you talk about it, the more attention it gets, the more validity it achieves.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I love Los Angeles. I love Hollywood. They’re beautiful. Everybody’s plastic, but I love plastic. I want to be plastic.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I think anybody can take a good picture. My idea of a good picture is one that’s in focus and of a famous person doing something unfamous. It’s being in the right place at the wrong time.” ~ Andy Warhol

“The most exciting thing is not doing it. If you fall in love with someone and never do it, it’s much more exciting.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Employees make the best dates. You don’t have to pick them up and they’re always tax-deductible.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I always notice flowers.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Buying is more American than thinking, and I’m as American as they come.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Sex is the biggest nothing of all time.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Empty space is never-wasted space. Wasted space is any space that has art in it.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I suppose I have a really loose interpretation of ‘work,’ because I think that just being alive is so much work at something you don’t always want to do. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.” ~ Andy Warhol

“People’s fantasies are what give them problems. If you didn’t have fantasies you wouldn’t have problems because you’d just take whatever was there.” ~ Andy Warhol

“There is beauty in everything, Just not everybody sees it.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Everyone will be famous for 15 minutes.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.” ~ Andy Warhol

“So many people seem to prefer my silver-screenings of movie stars to the rest of my work. It must be the subject matter that attracts them, because my death and violence paintings are just as good.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I like money on the wall. Say you were going to buy a $200,000 painting. I think you should take that money, tie it up, and hang it on the wall. Then when someone visited you the first thing they would see is the money on the wall.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I went to vote once, but I got too scared. I couldn’t decide whom to vote for.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I will go to the Opening of Anything, including a Toilet Seat.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I never wanted to be a painter; I wanted to be a tap dancer.” ~ Andy Warhol

“People are always calling me a mirror and if a mirror looks into a mirror, what is there to see?” ~ Andy Warhol

“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 strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it’s like you’re watching television – you don’t feel anything.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I just happen to like ordinary things. When I paint them, I don’t try to make them extraordinary. I just try to paint them ordinary-ordina ry.” ~ Andy Warhol

“There should be a course in first grade on love.” ~ Andy Warhol

“People are always so boring when they band together. You have to be alone to develop all the idiosyncrasies that make a person interesting.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Once you ‘got’ Pop, you could never see a sign again the same way again. And once you thought Pop, you could never see America the same way again.” ~ Andy Warhol

“The biggest price you pay for love is that you have to have somebody around, you can’t be on your own, wich is always so much better.” ~ Andy Warhol

“My ideal city would be one long main street with no cross streets or side streets to jam up traffic. Just a long one-way street.” ~ Andy Warhol

“If you wear a wig, everybody notices. But if you then dye the wig, people notice the dye.” ~ Andy Warhol

“James Dean was the damaged but beautiful soul of our time.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Brigitte Bardot was one of the first women to be really modern and treat men like love objects, buying them and discarding them. I like that.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Isn’t life a series of images that change as they repeat themselves?” ~ Andy Warhol

“You have to do stuff that average people don’t understand because those are the only good things.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Don’t think about making art…” ~ Andy Warhol

“I’m seeking out a new way to live and if it’s surfing, that’s the way I’ll do it. I’ll be a surfer for the rest of my life.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I had a lot of dates but I decided to stay home and dye my eyebrows.” ~ Andy Warhol

“When I was in the hospital after I was shot they gave me drugs, but it was so great to get off those.” ~ Andy Warhol

“One person in the 60s fascinated me more than anybody I had ever known. And the fascination I experienced was probably very close to a certain kind of love.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery.” ~ Andy Warhol

“But I always say, one’s company, two’s a crowd, and three’s a party.” ~ Andy Warhol

“You know it’s ART, when the check clears.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Art? That’s a man’s name.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Romance is finding your fantasy in people who don’t have it.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Pop art is for everyone.” ~ Andy Warhol

“The lobbies are always the best-looking place in the hotel-you wish you could bring out a cot and sleep in them. Compared to the lobby, your room always looks like a closet.” ~ Andy Warhol

“When you do something exactly wrong, you always turn up something.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Security breeds stagnation.” ~ Andy Warhol

“New York restaurants are about selling atmospheres.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Wasting money puts you in a real party mood.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Paintings are too hard. The things I want to show are mechanical. Machines have less problems. I’d like to be a machine, wouldn’t you?” ~ Andy Warhol

“The best museum is Bloomingdales.” ~ Andy Warhol

“When you work with people who misunderstand you, instead of getting transmissions, you get transmutations, and that’s much more interesting in the long run.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I like church. It’s empty when I go. I walk around. There are so many beautiful Catholic churches in New York.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, So what. That’s one of my favorite things to say. So what.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I’ve never made the separation between, say, the museum and the hardware store. I mean, I enjoy both of them, and I want to combine the two.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I don’t want to be smart, because being smart makes you depressed.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Fantasy love is much better than Reality Love.” ~ Andy Warhol

“The wide multitude wanted to seem contrarian. It meant that this type of nonconformism had to be mass-produced.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Voyeurism is a director’s job description. It’s an artist’s, too.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Day after day I look in the mirror and I still see something.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I like to work when I’m not working – do something that may not be considered work, but to me it’s work. Getting exercise by going to the grocery store.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I really do live for the future, because when I’m eating a box of candy, I can’t wait to taste the last piece. I don’t even taste any of the other pieces, I just want to finish and throw the box away and not have to have it on my mind any more. I would rather either have it now or know I’ll never have it so I don’t have to think about it.” ~ Andy Warhol

“If you’re not trying to be real, you don’t have to get it right. That’s art.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I can never get over when you’re on the beach how beautiful the sand looks and the water washes it away and straightens it up and the trees and the grass all look great. I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want to own.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Land really is the best art.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Why do people spend their time being sad when they could be happy?” ~ Andy Warhol

“A picture means I know where I was every minute. That’s why I take pictures. It’s a visual diary.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I like boring things.” ~ Andy Warhol

“People need to be made more aware of the need to work at learning how to live because life is so quick and sometimes it goes away too quickly.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I really do live for the future, because when I’m eating a box of candy, I can’t wait to taste the last piece.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I used to have the same lunch every day, for 20 years, I guess, the same thing over and over again.” ~ Andy Warhol

“The moment you label something, you take a step-I mean, you can never go back again to seeing it unlabelled.” ~ Andy Warhol

“It’s the movies that have really been running things in America ever since they were invented. They show you what to do, how to do it, when to do it, how to feel about it, and how to look how you feel about it.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I want to die with my blue jeans on.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I wake up every morning. I open my eyes and think: here we go again.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Think rich, look poor.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Living in New York City gives people real incentives to want things that nobody else wants.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Publicity is like eating peanuts. Once you start you can’t stop.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Everything is more glamorous when you do it in bed anyway.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I always run into strong women who are looking for weak men to dominate them.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I want to be a machine.” ~ Andy Warhol

“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.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Art is what you can get away with.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I see art in everything. Your shoes. That car. This coffee cup. It’s art if you see it as art. The best art are those dime novels. People will put those books in a museum one day. Artists will make paintings of them. They’re beautiful. And for everyone. That’s how I want my art to be.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Everyone winds up kissing the wrong person goodnight.” ~ Andy Warhol

“After Wakefield Poole’s films, mine are unnecessary and a bit naive, don’t you think?” ~ Andy Warhol

“The key of the success of Studio 54 is that it’s a dictatorship at the door and a democracy on the dance floor.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there – I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I just do art because I’m ugly and there’s nothing else for me to do.” ~ Andy Warhol

“The nicer I am, the more people think I’m lying.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Now and then, someone would accuse me of being evil – of letting people destroy themselves while I watched, just so I could film them and tape-record them. But I didn’t think of myself as evil – just realistic.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I have Social Disease. I have to go out every night. If I stay home one night I start spreading rumors to my dogs.” ~ Andy Warhol

“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.” ~ Andy Warhol

“It must be hard to be a model, because you’d want to be like the photograph of you, and you can’t ever look that way.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I used to drink Coke all the time. It was so good. It gives you a lot of energy.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Sex is more exciting on the screen and between the pages than between the sheets.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Fashion is more art than art is.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Love and sex can go together and sex and unlove can go together and love and unsex can go together. But personal love and personal sex is bad.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Sometimes the little times you don’t think are anything while they’re happening turn out to be what marks a whole period of your life.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Most people in America think Art is a man’s name.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Business art is the step that comes after Art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I want everybody to think alike. I think everybody should be a machine.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I think having land and not ruining it is the most beautiful art that anybody could ever want.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I always thought I’d like my own tombstone to be blank. No epitaph, and no name. Well, actually, I’d like it to say ‘figment.’” ~ Andy Warhol

“Photographers feel guilty that all they do for a living is press a button.” ~ Andy Warhol

“You can never predict what little things in the way somebody looks or talks or acts will set off peculiar emotional reactions in other people.” ~ Andy Warhol

“People should fall in love with their eyes closed.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I don’t know where the artificial stops and the real starts.” ~ Andy Warhol

“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” ~ Andy Warhol

“When I look at things, I always see the space they occupy. I always want the space to reappear, to make a comeback, because it’s lost space when there’s something in it.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Perception precedes reality.” ~ Andy Warhol

“The world fascinates me.” ~ Andy Warhol

“An artist is somebody who produces things that people don’t need to have.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I read an article on me once that described my machine-method of silk-screen copying and painting: ‘What a bold and audacious solution, what depths of the man are revealed in this solution!’ What does that mean?” ~ Andy Warhol

“You need to let the little things that would ordinarily bore you suddenly thrill you.” ~ Andy Warhol

“In some circles where very heavy people think they have very heavy brains, words like “charming” and “clever” and “pretty” are all put-downs; all the lighter things in life, which are the most important things, are put down.” ~ Andy Warhol

“If you’re traveling for five years or something like that, you’re going somewhere. But five years are being used up, and you don’t have to do anything. You just sit on the plane. That might make time go really fast.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Being born is like being kidnapped. And then sold into slavery. People are working every minute. The machinery is always going. Even when you sleep.” ~ Andy Warhol

“The idea of America is so wonderful because the more equal something is, the more American it is.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Everybody must have a fantasy.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I can’t remember my dreams more than a couple of seconds after I wake up. It’s frustrating because sometimes I dream that I’m watching a really good movie.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I wanted to paint nothing. I was looking for something that was the essence of nothing, and the soup can was it.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I am a deeply superficial person.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” ~ Andy Warhol

“When I look around today, the biggest anachronism I see is pregnancy. I just can’t believe that people are still pregnant.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Kiss me with your eyes.” ~ Andy Warhol

“What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I’m for mechanical art. When I took up silk screening, it was to more fully exploit the preconceived image through the commercial techniques of multiple reproduction.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Even beauties can be unattractive. If you catch a beauty in the wrong light at the right time, forget it. I believe in low lights and trick mirrors. I believe in plastic surgery.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I always wished I had died, and I still wish that, because I could have gotten the whole thing over with.” ~ Andy Warhol

“You have to hang on in periods when your style isn’t popular, because if it’s good, it’ll come back, and you’ll be a recognized beauty once again.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Space is all one space and thought is all one thought, but my mind divides its spaces into spaces into spaces and thoughts into thoughts into thoughts. Like a large condominium. Occasionally I think about the one Space and the one Thought, but usually I don’t. Usually I think about my condominium.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Look poor, think rich.” ~ Andy Warhol

“It does not matter how slowly you go so long as you do not stop.” ~ Andy Warhol

“The idea of waiting for something makes it more exciting.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I love going out every night. It’s so exciting.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Every song has a memory; every song has the ability to make or break your heart, shut down the heart, and open the eyes. But I’m afraid if you look at a thing long enough; it loses all of its meaning.” ~ Andy Warhol

“My fascination with letting images repeat and repeat or in film’s case ‘run on’ manifests my belief that we spend much of our lives seeing without observing.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Maybe the reason my memory is so bad is that I always do at least two things at once. It’s easier to forget something you only half-did or quarter did.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Why do people think artists are special? It’s just another job.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Actually, I jade very quickly. Once is usually enough. Either once only, or every day. If you do something once it’s exciting, and if you do it every day it’s exciting. But if you do it, say, twice or just almost every day, it’s not good any more.” ~ Andy Warhol

“After being alive, the next hardest work is having sex.” ~ Andy Warhol

“As soon as you stop wanting something, you get it.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I think everybody should like everybody.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I don’t believe people die. They just go uptown. To Bloomingdales. They just take longer to get back.” ~ Andy Warhol

“You can be just as faithful to a place or a thing as you can to a person. A place can really make your heart skip a beat, especially if you have to take a plane to get there.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I think an artist is anybody who does something well, like if you cook well.” ~ Andy Warhol

“When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can’t make them change if they don’t want to, just like when they do want to, you can’t stop them.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Beauty is a sign of intelligence.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I always hear myself saying, ‘She’s a beauty!’ or ‘He’s a beauty!’ or ‘What a beauty!’ but I never know what I’m talking about.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I believe in low lights and trick mirrors.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I do the same thing everyday. I go to work and paint. I try to turn out as many pictures as I can.” ~ Andy Warhol

“The reason I’m painting this way is that I want to be a machine, and I feel that whatever I do and do machine-like is what I want to do.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I still care about people but it would be so much easier not to care. I don’t want to get too close; I don’t like to touch things…” ~ Andy Warhol

“You have to be willing to get happy about nothing.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Switzerland is my favorite place now, because it’s so – nothing. There is absolutely nothing to do.” ~ Andy Warhol

“The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet.” ~ Andy Warhol

“When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships.” ~ Andy Warhol

“If you can convince yourself that you look fabulous, you can save yourself the trouble of primping.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I think kids should go to high school until they’re 30. No, really, because people are staying younger now and there’s nothing to do. If you stayed longer, then it would be really great.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I smoke pot because I want to go to heaven before I die.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Fashion wasn’t what you wore someplace anymore; it was the whole reason for going.” ~ Andy Warhol

“The most beautiful thing in Tokyo is McDonald’s. The most beautiful thing in Stockholm is McDonald’s. The most beautiful thing in Florence is McDonald’s. Peking and Moscow don’t have anything beautiful yet.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I’m bored with that line. I never use it anymore. My new line is ‘In 15 minutes everybody will be famous.’” ~ Andy Warhol

“New things are always better than old things.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Success is when the checks don’t bounce.” ~ Andy Warhol

“If everybody’s not a beauty, then nobody is.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I broke something and realized I should break something once a week to remind me how fragile life is.” ~ Andy Warhol

“And your own life while it’s happening to you never has any atmosphere until it’s a memory.” ~ Andy Warhol

“My instinct about painting says, ‘if you don’t think about it, it’s right.’ As soon as you have to decide and choose, it’s wrong. And the more you decide about, the more wrong it gets.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Since I was shot, everything is such a dream to me. Like I don’t know whether I’m alive or whether I died. I wasn’t afraid before. And having been dead once, I shouldn’t feel fear. But I am afraid. I don’t understand why.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Everything will be art and nothing will be art, because everything, as I believe, already is.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I never met a pet I didn’t like.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Don’t pay any attention to what they write about you. Just measure it in inches.” ~ Andy Warhol

“The interviewer should just tell me the words he wants me to say and I’ll repeat them after him. I think that would be so great because I’m so empty I just can’t think of anything to say.” ~ Andy Warhol

“You meet rich people and you hang around with them, and one night they’ve had a few drinks and they say ‘I’ll buy it!’ Then they tell their friends, ‘You must have this person’s work, darling,’ and that’s all you need. That’s all it takes. Get it?” ~ Andy Warhol

“I never understand how the lipstick business goes on because lipstick lasts forever.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I see art in everything. Your shoes. That car. This coffee cup. It’s art if you see it as art.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Death means a lot of money, honey. Death can really make you look like a star.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I like to be the right thing in the wrong place and the wrong thing in the right place. Being the right thing in the wrong place and the wrong thing in the right place is worth it because something interesting always happens.” ~ Andy Warhol

“Traveling makes time go fast. So maybe traveling in space will give people time.” ~ Andy Warhol

“I think somebody should be able to do all my paintings for me.” ~ Andy Warhol