Andy Warhol Quotes

158 Sourced Quotes

After being alive, the next hardest work is having sex. Of course, for some people it isn't work because they need the exercise and they've got the energy for the sex and the sex gives them even more energy. Some people get energy from sex and some people lose energy from sex. I have found that it's too much work. But if you have the time for it, and if you need that exercise—then you should do it. But you could really save yourself a lot of trouble either way by first figuring out whether you're an energy-getter or an energy-loser. As I said, I'm an energy-loser. But I can understand it when I see people running around trying to get some.

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
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
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
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
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
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. Ans 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.

Andy Warhol
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
Sometimes you fantasize that people who are really up-there and rich and living it up have something you don't have, that their things must be better than your things because they have more money than you. But they drink the same Cokes and eat the same hot dogs and wear the same ILGWU clothes and see the same TV shows and the same movies. Rich people can't see a sillier version of Truth or Consequences, or a scarier version of The Exorcist. You can get just as revolted as they can—you can have the same nightmares. All of this is really American.

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

Andy Warhol
I don't want to be smart, because being smart makes you depressed.

Andy Warhol
Somebody said that Bertolt Brecht [German socialist writer of political theater] wanted everybody to think alike. I want everybody to think alike. But Brecht wanted to do it through Communism, in a way. Russia is doing it under government. It's happening here [in America] all by itself without being under a strict government; so if it's working without trying, why can't it work without being Communist? Everybody looks alike and acts alike, and we're getting more and more that way.

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
I love every "lib" movement there is, because after the "lib" the things that were always a mystique become understandable and boring, and then nobody has to feel left out if they're not part of what is happening. For instance, single people looking for husbands and wives used to feel left out because the image marriage had in the old days was so wonderful. Jane Wyatt and Robert Young. Nick and Nora Charles, Ethel and Fred Mertz, Dagwood and Blondie.

Andy Warhol
The more you look at the same exact thing, the more the meaning goes away, and the better and emptier you feel.

Andy Warhol
Sometimes you're invited to a big ball and for months you think about how glamorous and exciting it's going to be. Then you fly to Europe and you go to the ball and when you think back on it a couple of months later what you remember is maybe the car ride to the ball, you can't remember the ball at all. 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. I should have been dreaming for months about the car ride to the ball and getting dressed for the car ride, and buying my ticket to Europe so I could take the car ride. Then, who knows, maybe I could have remembered the ball.

Andy Warhol
I don't believe in it, because you're not around to know that it's happened. I can't say anything about it because I'm not prepared for it.

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
I thought that young people had more problems than old people...Then I looked around and saw that everybody who looked young had young problems and that everybody who looked old had old problems.

Andy Warhol
I really don't care that much about "Beauties." What I really like are Talkers. To me, good talkers are beautiful because good talk is what I love. The word itself shows why I like Talkers better than Beauties, why I tape more than I film. It's not "talkies." Talkers are doing something. Beauties are being something. Which isn't necessarily bad, it's just that I don't know what it is they're being. It's more fun to be with people who are doing things.

Andy Warhol
Since people are going to be living longer and getting older, they'll just have to learn how to be babies longer.

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

Andy Warhol
When I did my self-portrait, I left all the pimples out because you always should. Pimples are a temporary condition and they don't have anything to do with what you really look like. Always omit the blemishes-they're not part of the good picture you want.

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

Andy Warhol