131 Quotes by Tracey Emin

When I think about sex it makes me realise how alone I feel.

I had become conscious of my physicality, aware of my presence and open to the ugly truths of the world. At the age of thirteen, I realised that there was a danger in innocence and beauty, and I could not live with both.

I'm not opposed to commerce, even though I'm an artist.

The words went round and round and round in my mind and my body, until I knew they were no longer my words but something that had been carved into my heart. And now my soul was crying.

What's really good about the word 'art' is that 'art' is a word like 'love,' or 'god,' or whatever. It transcends so many things...

My influences were from Europe from between 1900 and 1945. My favorite artists were Egon Schiele or Edvard Munch. I wasn't interested in contemporary art at all.

Have you ever longed for someone so much, so deeply that you thought you would die? That your heart would just stop beating? I am longing now, but for whom I don't know. My whole body craves to be held. I am desperate to love and be loved. I want my mind to float into another's. I want to be set free from despair by the love I feel for another. I want to be physically part of someone else. I want to be joined. I want to be open and free to explore every part of them, as though I were exploring myself.

I've worked really hard. I've made three pieces of seminal art in my life. If I died tomorrow, I'd be remembered for making them. There are a lot of artists who, no matter how hard they work in their lives, will never make anything seminal.

Most people don't do something seminal. I've done it twice: with my tent and my bed. Picasso did it with Cubism.