The acquisition of what you want comes always at the moment when you’ve stopped wanting it, which is the moment when you can afford to have it without losing your head. When you stop wanting them, that’s when you can handle having them.
I think “aura” is something that only other people can see, and they only see as much as they want to see. “Aura” must be something that exists only until you open your mouth.
When you run into someone you haven’t seen in, say, five years, and neither of you makes a big deal about it. It’s the best when you see each other and don’t even blink for a second. You don’t say, “What have you been up to?"—you don’t try to catch up. Very flat, crisp, casual. That’s the best time.
They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.
You can cry or you can laugh. Anytime you’re crying, you could be laughing, you have the choice. Crazy people know this best because their minds are not restrained. So you can use the flexibility your mind allows and make it work for you. You decide what you want to do and how you want to live.
I really look awful, and I never bother to dress up or try to be attractive because I don’t want anyone to fall in love with me. That’s just the way it is. I play down my good features and play up my bad ones. I never fall apart because I never pull myself together.
You simply shouldn’t do things that aren’t the kind of things people like you do. You can say things that aren’t the kind of things people like you say, but you can’t do things that people like you don’t do.
Never doing it is very exciting. The most exciting attractions are between two opposites that never meet. The best love is not-to-think-about-it love. People should fall in love with their eyes closed. Just close your eyes. Don’t look.
I really don’t care that much about “Beauties.” What I really like are Talkers. Talkers are doing something. Beauties are being something.
Beauty doesn’t have anything to do with sex. Beauty has to do with beauty and sex has to do with sex.
Sometimes people having nervous breakdown problems can look very beautiful because they have that fragile something to the way they move or walk.
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. My favorite piece of sculpture is a solid wall with a hole in it to frame the space on the other side. Empty space is never-wasted space. Wasted space is any space that has art in it.
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.
They don’t sell their food, they sell their atmosphere. Instead of “going out to dinner” they’ll just be “going out to atmosphere.” The best atmosphere I can think of is film, because it’s three-dimensional physically and two-dimensional emotionally.
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. Nothing in-between is as good as once or every day.
Source: The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (From A to B and Back Again) Author: Andy Warhol