Top 50 Grayson Perry Quotes

Fashion is a language, and therefore says something about politics, and certain fashion styles get associated with certain political standpoints.

I think that democracy has a lowest common denominator thing going on, so it might be the best of a bad bunch of political systems; but as a way of making art, actually, its not always that great, because it boils everything down.

Part of being an artist is that you are achingly self-conscious about every aesthetic decision you make, and taste is at its most powerful when it’s a default, unconscious decision because that’s when all the influence of your childhood and background and society comes into play.

If you act as if you love someone and care about them, then before long you do care and you do love them.

Success in the art world means getting invitations to exhibit in some great places. I had shown in contemporary art museums in Europe, America, New Zealand and Japan. I’d also been asked to curate shows, and had made work to go with my selections from historical collections.

My great overall skill is spontaneity and winging it!

I’ve always gone out with women who made me laugh.

From birth until I went to art college when I was 19, there are perhaps less than a dozen photographs of me.

Well, within my business, visual art, the intake is 75 per cent female and yet you look at who has showed their work and I think there still is a dominance of males.

If you stick to your dream script, you will have a boring and meaningless life.

I think Im addicted to periods of doubt and low confidence. I think you should worry if you dont have them because then youre not trying hard enough.

Well, intellectual importance is directly linked to financial value in the art world. I mean, thats the thing you really want – museum quality. You want to go down in the annals of art history.

Many office workers loathe dress-down Fridays because they can no longer hide behind a suit. They might have to expose something of their messy selves through their ‘casual’ clothes.

I cant make art to please everybody all the time. I make art that I like.

The best view is always from the mountain you’ve climbed.

I think of colour sense as the visual equivalent of perfect pitch. Some people can just reach into a pile of swatches and say that looks nice with that.

I always think that painters are fighting over the last original brushstroke. To find your own voice is incredibly hard.

My tapestries are woven on a computer-controlled loom. I design them on Photoshop. I recently did some digitally-routed woodcuts because I wanted the woodcut look, but I didn’t want to get the chisels out.

Gender is great, and Im happy for anybody to celebrate wherever they are on the gender spectrum. Its got amazingly much easier in my lifetime.

I operate on anger quite a lot. Its what gets me up in the morning to make art quite often. Well, irritation at least.

My job is to make meaning. To make meaning in a meaningless world.

In the art world, originality is seen as a precious commodity and its increasingly difficult to get because the territory of art is so trampled.

You don’t work in a vacuum. If you’re a visual artist you work in a visual culture. If you’re a pop musician you listen to pop music. If you’re an artist you should know about the art world.

One of the dangers of male emotionality is that theyre not aware of it churning away beneath them the whole time.

I think its dangerous when people think theyre being expressive. Yuck. Its like people who say theyre spiritual, innit. You make the work you want to make, and you get on with it and hopefully it connects with other people.

Im a maximalist, so Im probably not very elegant. My art is not a coup de grce. Its a war of attrition.

I’ve got a pot in my studio that is just a bitter rant against the art world. I call it my Dorian Gray.

I never held myself as a nice person for most of my life.

If youre sure that everything youre going to do is going to be good, then whats the point? I used to think of it as just crippling self-doubt. Now I kind of see it as a sign that Im teetering on the edge of something new. Or troubling.

When mobile phones came out, they were a status symbol. Now the status symbol is having someone to manage your mobile phone for you.

I’m suspicious when I go to someone’s house and everything is beautiful and perfect. Authenticity often means mistakes.

Mother had an affair with the milkman, who later became my stepdad and my father left. My stepdad was an angry guy and Mother was a hysterical narcissist. It was a toxic mixture and there was a lot of disruption and violent arguments in the house.

I realised that identity always seemed to be an issue when it was challenged – thats when it seemed to be most in 3D, so that you could look at it.

I think people mistakenly get their chaos muddled up with their creativity. Provided you know what your issues are, they’re not going to go away.

Pottery was what sandal-wearing, windchime-lovers did. Art is sensitive to areas of visual culture that havent yet been colonised by the art world, and perhaps what they sensed back then was, here was an area that hadnt been fully explored.

Nothing frustrates me about the art world. It is a lovely place. There are many daft things that amuse me about it though.

And it’s been one of my big sort of campaigns throughout my career, really, is to sort of make art accessible but without dumbing it down. You know, art – the more you know about it, the more you enjoy it.

Self-consciousness is almost the biggest thing you have to deal with as an artist. That’s why many artists crash and burn, because they can’t handle the attention and the financial implications of every brushstroke.

I embrace the middle ground, because curiously it has more edge to it than the cutting edge. It has been a weirdly neglected path for the audience of contemporary art. Im making art not for people who dont like art, but for people who are interested but maybe alienated by the more esoteric pieces.

I was once judging some prisoner art, and you wouldnt believe the number of eagles and tigers and symbols of freedom and wildness that came up. It was a really strong trope.

For me, earnestness is the greatest crime an Englishman can commit.

I have a knack for winning prizes; it must be something Ive done!

How art works is really interesting. It comes from our unconscious, a lot of it. And were communicating in ways were not completely aware of when were making it.

If Id had a happy childhood I definitely wouldnt have become the person I am – although a bad childhood isnt a recipe for being a creative person. There are many people in the arts who come from perfectly happy, middle-class homes.

Im as masculine as the next man – get me on the mountain bike and Im vicious.

As an artist I’m very aware of what I call Picasso-napkin syndrome – I’ve got this 20th century version of the midas touch, where if I do a little doodle it’s worth money!

When we talk of identity, we often think of groups such as black Muslim lesbians in wheelchairs. This is because identity only seems to become an issue when it is challenged or under threat.

Im interested in those things that hover in our unconsciousnesses – class, gender, identity – until we have to think about them for whatever reason. So normal is whatevers normal for you, until its not.

My mother is a strong person. She’s funny but volatile, with a pretty bad temper.

As human beings, we are addicted to novelty. Part of being stylish is surprisingness. Part of being an artist is surprisingness. If there are ingredients of beauty, it certainly is one of them. Surprise is like a spice on the meal, it makes you say: ‘woo’.