Anselm Kiefer Quotes

I am interested in reconstructing symbols. It's about connecting with an older knowledge and trying to discover continuities in why we search for heaven.

Ruins, for me, are the beginning. With the debris, you can construct new ideas. They are symbols of a beginning.

Buying art is not understanding art.

Art is longing. You never arrive, but you keep going in the hope that you will.

As a child I had no toys; our house was bombed, but there were lots of bricks. Ruins are wonderful because they are the beginning of something new, you can do something with them.

But I believe above all that I wanted to build the palace of my memory, because my memory is my only homeland.

I believe art has to take responsibility but it should not give up being art.

History speaks to artists. It changes the artist's thinking and is constantly reshaping it into different and unexpected images.

I believe in empty spaces; they're the most wonderful thing.

If I do something that depresses, it's not because I'm depressed, but because political life and history is depressing.

The book, the idea of a book or the image of a book, is a symbol of learning, of transmitting knowledge.. I make my own books to find my way through the old stories.

History is formed by the people, those who have power and those without power. Each one of us makes history.

Life is an illusion. I am held together in the nothingness by art.

I never see a forest that does not bear a mark or a sign of history.

When knowledge becomes rigid, it stops living.

Art is difficult. Its not entertainment.

Art really is something very difficult. It is difficult to make, and it is sometimes difficult for the viewer to understand. It is difficult to work out what is art and what is not art.

I might have been born into a very literal sense of chaos, but in fact that state is true of all of us.

Art maybe the only space where an indvidual can be utterly free to question himself, as well as his relationship to his God

I grew up in a forest. It's like a room. It's protected. Like a cathedral... it is a place between heaven and earth.

Not content, but the road the artist takes, is the interesting part.

Because of my Calvinistic upbringing, I was trained to think that what you do has to have a purpose.

I am against the idea of the end, that everything culminates in paradise or judgment.

When I see a new artist I give myself a lot of time to reflect and decide whether it's art or not.

I believe in empty spaces they're the most wonderful thing.