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# Choice Quotes from Damien Hirst's Guardian Interview
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/damien-hirst-guardian-interview/
- Published: 2012-03-12T13:16:18.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:46:14.000Z
- Description: Some notable quotations from this Guardian interview with the richest artist in the world — his wealth is estimated at £215m (approx. $336m) …
- Author: Hrag Vartanian
- Tags: Opinion, Damien Hirst, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 06:51 (2012, 2013, part 1)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2012/03/hirst-banksy-spots-home.jpg)

A collaborative work between Hirst and Banksy (via flickr.com/eddiedangerous)

Here are some notable quotations from this *Guardian* [interview](http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/mar/11/damien-hirst-tate-retrospective-interview?CMP=twt%5Fgu&ref=hyperallergic.com) with the richest artist in the world, Damien Hirst, whose wealth is estimated at £215m (approx. $336m):

- “And I say, ‘No way. Museums are for dead artists. I’d never show my work in the Tate. You’d never get me in that place.'”
- “My eldest boy, Connor, is 16\. A few of my friends have died. I’m getting older. I’m not the mad bastard shouting at the world any more.”
- “It says that I didn’t just arrive on the planet going ‘Fuck you’ to everybody, which is what a lot of people seem to think.”
- “I’ve spent a long time avoiding painting and dealing with it from a distance … But as I get older I’m more comfortable with it.”
- “Well, I remember in about 1989, when I was still an outsider and all my mates were having shows and I wasn’t, and it really bugged me. As I was making the fly piece, I was thinking: ‘I’m gonna show you. I’m gonna kill you with this one, knock you down dead, and change the world.’ And I showed it to a few galleries and they all just turned round and went ‘Marvellous, darling.’ It didn’t have the effect I wanted. It had the opposite effect. I was gutted, in a way.”
- “The tank and the shark travel separately. Then you clean it and set it up, add the formaldehyde. Basically … it’s just a big aquarium with a dead fish in it.”
- “I do believe art is more powerful than money, though. I still believe that. And if I ever find out money’s more important, I’ll knock it on the head.”
- “I don’t believe it’s about God-given genius, but I do believe somehow in the magic of art even though I don’t want to. I believe in science. I want clear answers.”

The [whole thing](http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/mar/11/damien-hirst-tate-retrospective-interview?CMP=twt%5Fgu&ref=hyperallergic.com) is worth reading.