Andy Warhol - People Quotes

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Business art is the step that comes after Art. I started as a commercial artist, and I want to finish as a business artist. After I did the thing called 'art' or whatever it's called, I went into business art. I wanted to be an Art Businessman or a Business Artist. Being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art. During the hippies era people put down the idea of business – they'd say 'Money is bad', and 'Working is bad', but making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.

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. 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
In the early days of film, fans used to idolize a whole star - they would take one star and love everything about that star... Today people can idolize a star in one area and forget about him in another. A big rock star might sell millions and millions of records, but then if he makes a bad movie... forget it.

Andy Warhol
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.

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

Andy Warhol
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 bog 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.

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
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
An artist is someone who produces things that people don't need to have but that he—for some reason—thinks it would be a good idea to give them.

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
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 don't see anything wrong with being alone, it feels great to me. People make a big thing about personal love. It doesn't have to be such a big thing. The same for living - people make a big thing about that too. But personal living and personal loving are the two things the Eastern-type wise men don't think about.

Andy Warhol
What I was actually trying to do in my early movies was show how people can meet other people and what they can do and what they can say to each other. That was the whole idea: two people getting acquainted. And then when you saw it and you saw the sheer simplicity of it, you learned what it was all about. Those movies showed you how some people act and react with other people. They were like actual sociological 'For instance's. They were like documentaries, and if you thought it could apply to you, it was an example, and if it didn't apply to you, at least it was a documentary, it could apply to somebody you knew and it could clear up some questions you had about them.

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
Before I was shot [June, 1968], I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there - I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. 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 so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it's like watching television - you don't feel anything. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television. The channels switch, but it's all television.

Andy Warhol
Free countries are great, because you can actually sit in somebody else's space for a while and pretend you're a part of it. You can sit in the Plaza Hotel and you don't even have to live there. You can just sit and watch the people go by.

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
Why do people think artists are special? It's just another job.

Andy Warhol
I'm confused about who the news belongs to. I always have it in my head that if your name's in the news, then the news should be paying you. Because it's your news and they're taking it and selling it as their product. But then they always say that they're helping you, and that's true too, but still, if people didn't give the news their news, and if everybody kept their news to themselves, the news wouldn't have any news. So I guess you should pay each other. But I haven't figured it out fully yet.

Andy Warhol
When I have to think about it, I know the picture is wrong. And sizing is a form of thinking and coloring is too. 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. Some people, they paint abstract, so they sit there thinking about it because their thinking makes them feel they're doing something. But my thinking never makes me feel I'm doing anything.

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

Andy Warhol
Among other things, drag queens are living testimony to the way women used to want to be, the way some people still want them to be, and the way some women still actually want to be. Drags are ambulatory archives of ideal moviestar womanhood. They perform a documentary service, usually consecrating their lives to keeping the glittering alternative alive and available for (not-too-close) inspection.

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
I think every painting should be the same size and the same color so they're all interchangeable and nobody thinks they have a better painting or a worse painting.... Besides even when the subject is different, people want the same painting.

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