30 Quotes by Agnes Denes

I never considered myself a performance artist.

People are always fighting reality until it's pushed down their throats.

People always understand everything in retrospect.

Most wonderful things are unconscious.

If I could relive my life, what I would do is work with scientists. But not one scientist, because they're locked into their little specializations. I'd go from scientist to scientist to scientist, like a bee goes from flower to flower.

People don't hurt what they love.

I study what I work with. I studied all these different fields of science that I needed for my work. I studied how to mine a landfill and what to plant in it. It's fascinating because you learn a new field each time.

Society likes to file you away, put you in this or that category. And I never fit any category. Maybe that's why I was left out of a lot of things, or why my work was not really understood, because there was no precedent for it.

Every one of my works, when I'm looking back, becomes some kind of solution, or something to concentrate on. Something to pay attention to and maybe change direction.