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David Wojnarowicz Quotes

Feeling animalistic. Feeling Hyena. Feeling Wolf. Feeling Dog. I am tongue and heart.

Feeling animalistic. Feeling Hyena. Feeling Wolf. Feeling Dog. I am tongue and heart.

David Wojnarowicz
Dog, Heart, Feelings

History is made and preserved by and for particular classes of people. A camera in some hands can preserve an alternate history.

David Wojnarowicz
Hands, Class, People
David Wojnarowicz (1994). “David Wojnarowicz: brush fires in the social landscape”

Bottom line, if people don't say what they believe, those ideas and feelings get lost. If they are lost often enough, those ideas and feelings never return.

David Wojnarowicz
Believe, Ideas, People
David Wojnarowicz (2014). “Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration”, p.87, Open Road Media

I've been in rage all my life at this thing we call 'society'

David Wojnarowicz
Rage
David Wojnarowicz (1994). “David Wojnarowicz: brush fires in the social landscape”

I want to throw up because we're supposed to quietly and politely make house in this killing machine called America and pay taxes to support our own slow murder and I'm amazed we're not running amok in the streets, and that we can still be capable of gestures of loving after lifetimes of all this.

David Wojnarowicz
Running, Loving Life, America
David Wojnarowicz (1990). “David Wojnarowicz: Tongues of Flame”, University Galleries

Transition is always a relief. Destination means death to me. If I could figure out a way to remain forever in transition, in the disconnected and unfamiliar, I could remain in a state of perpetual freedom.

David Wojnarowicz
Mean, Forever, Transition
David Wojnarowicz (1994). “David Wojnarowicz: brush fires in the social landscape”

I worry that friends will slowly become professional pallbearers, waiting for each death, of their lovers, friends and neighbors, and polishing their funeral speeches; perfecting their rituals of death rather than a relatively simple ritual of life such as screaming in the streets.

David Wojnarowicz
Simple, Worry, Funeral
David Wojnarowicz (2017). “Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration”, p.113, Canongate Books

I am all emptiness and futility. I am an empty stranger, a carbon copy of my form. I can no longer find what I'm looking for outside of myself. It doesn't exist out there. Maybe it's only in here, inside my head. But my head is glass and my eyes have stopped being cameras, the tape has run out and nobody's words can touch me.

David Wojnarowicz
Running, Eye, Glasses

To me, photographs are like words and I generally will place many photographs together or print them one inside the other in order to construct a free-floating sentence that speaks about the world I witness.

David Wojnarowicz
Order, Together, Floating
David Wojnarowicz (2014). “Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration”, p.81, Open Road Media

Darkness has completely descended onto the landscape and I stood up and stretched my arms above my head and I wondered what it would be like if it were a perfect world. Only god knows. And he is dead.

David Wojnarowicz
Perfect, Darkness, Would Be
David Wojnarowicz (2017). “Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration”, p.50, Canongate Books

... all of my life I've made things that are like fragmented mirrors of what I perceive to be the world. As far as I'm concerned the fact that in 1990 the human body is still a taboo subject is unbelievably ridiculous. What exactly is frightening about the human body?

David Wojnarowicz
Mirrors, Exactly Is, World
David Wojnarowicz (2014). “Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration”, p.88, Open Road Media

No one can really explain in a rational way what makes a good photograph or a bad photograph... This is why the art world will not throw billions of dollars at photography the way it has at painting; and that is what makes it an exciting medium.

David Wojnarowicz
Photography, Art, Dollars
David Wojnarowicz (2017). “Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration”, p.127, Canongate Books

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