30 Quotes by Michael Heizer

I was taken out of school by my dad when I was 11 and lived in Mexico City, then later in Paris. I went with him to excavate in Bolivia and Peru. I never finished high school. I was a straight F student anyway. My father admitted to me later that he'd thought I would come to no good.

I come from an academic background. I wasn't raised to be into promoting myself.

I wasn't an academic looking in books for ideas. But I educated myself about historical work that was similar to mine, to provide a frame of reference that wasn't the usual frame of reference of the New York art world and Europe.

The size thing is not some gimmick or attention-getting trick but a genuine undercurrent of the work. Frank Gehry for instance likes to imagine his buildings as sculptures. I like to imagine my sculptures as architectural.

Artwork is not like a commercial business; there is no such thing as a schedule for art. You can't hurry art.

I'm not a dogmatic, purist psychopath. There's an unfair image of me - mean, crazy, hostile. I'm really a very gentle person.

I’m self-entertaining. My dialogue is with myself.

Frank Gehry for instance likes to imagine his buildings as sculptures. I like to imagine my sculptures as architectural.

I wasn't political enough to write articles about myself or go to cocktail parties, meaning that not only has my art been pirated and my intellectual property rights stolen, but my work has been misrepresented.