Louise Bourgeois Quotes

Art is restoration: the idea is to repair the damages that are inflicted in life, to make something that is fragmented - which is what fear and anxiety do to a person - into something whole.

Tell your own story, and you will be interesting.

Art is a way of recognizing oneself.

In my sculpture, it's not an image I am seeking, it's not an idea. My goal is to re-live a past emotion. My art is an exorcism, and beauty is something I never talk about.

A work of art does not need an explanation. The work has to speak for itself. The work may be subject to many interpretations, but only one was in the mind of the artist. Some artists say to make the work readable for the public is an artist’s responsibility, but I don’t agree with that. The only responsibility to be absolutely truthful to the self. My work disturbs people and nobody wants to be disturbed They are not fully aware of the effect my work has on them, but they know it is disturbing.

I am not what I am, I am what I do with my hands.

I am a searcher... I always was... and I still am... searching for the missing piece.

One must accept the fact that others don’t see what you do.

Art is a guarantee of sanity. That is the most important thing I have said.

I have been to hell and back, and let me tell you, it was wonderful.

The Spider is an ode to my mother. She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver. . . Like spiders, my mother was very clever. Spiders are friendly presences that eat mosquitoes. We know that mosquitoes spread diseases and are therefore unwanted. So, spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother.

When I was growing up, all the women in my house were using needles. I've always had a fascination with the needle, the magic power of the needle. The needle is used to repair damage. It's a claim to forgiveness. It is never aggressive, it's not a pin.

A work of art doesn't have to be explained. If you do not have any feeling about this, I cannot explain it to you. If this doesn't touch you, I have failed.

I came from a family of repairers. The spider is a repairer. If you bash into the web of a spider, she doesn't get mad. She weaves and repairs it.

An artist can show things that other people are terrified of expressing.

The subject of pain is the business I am in - to give meaning and shape to frustration and suffering. The existence of pain cannot be denied. I propose no remedies or excuses.

I always had the fear of being separated and abandoned. The sewing is my attempt to keep things together and make things whole.

To be an artist, you need to exist in a world of silence.

Every day you have to abandon your past or accept it and then, if you cannot accept it, you become a sculptor.

Horizontality is a desire to give up, to sleep. Verticality is an attempt to escape. Hanging and floating are states of ambivalence.

My art is a form of restoration in terms of my feelings to myself and to others.

The feminists took me as a role model, as a mother. It bothers me. I am not interested in being a mother. I am still a girl trying to understand myself.

Clothing is . . . an exercise in memory. It makes me explore the past: how did I feel when I wore that. They are like signposts in the search for the past.

If you are resentful, you keep the thing alive. So the way to go on is to get rid of it, in order to forgive in order to forget.

Art is manipulation without intervention.