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If you are resentful, you keep the thing alive. So the way to go on is to get rid of it, in order to forgive in order to forget.

Louise Bourgeois

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Louise Bourgeois
Age: 98 †
Born: 1911
Born: January 1
Died: 2010
Died: January 1
Artist
Drawer
Engraver
Illustrator
Installation Artist
Jewelry Designer
Painter
Photographer
Printmaker
Sculptor
Visual Artist
Paris
France
Louise Goldwater
Forget
Keep
Order
Thing
Way
Resentful
Forgive
Forgiving
Alive

More quotes by Louise Bourgeois

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My life has been regulated by insomnia.
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When I was growing up, all the women in my house were using needles. I've always had a fascination with the needle, the magic power of the needle. The needle is used to repair damage. It's a claim to forgiveness. It is never aggressive, it's not a pin.
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I found in rules of mathematics a peace and a trust that I could not place in human beings. This sublimation was total and remained total.
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I was a runaway girl from France who married an American and moved to New York City. Im not sure I would have continued as an artist had I remained in Paris because of the family setup.
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For me, sculpture is the body. My body is my sculpture.
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My work disturbs people and nobody wants to be disturbed. They are not fully aware of the effect my work has on them, but they know it is disturbing.
Louise Bourgeois
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I have drawn my whole life. My parents were in the tapestry restoration business, and as a young girl, I would draw in the missing parts of the tapestry that needed to be re-woven. My ability to draw made me indispensable to my parents.
Louise Bourgeois
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Horizontality is a desire to give up, to sleep. Verticality is an attempt to escape. Hanging and floating are states of ambivalence.
Louise Bourgeois
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My mother was a restorer, she repaired broken things. I don't do that. I destroy things. I cannot go the straight line. I must destroy, rebuild, destroy again. My rhythm is not the same. My mother moved in a straight line: I go from one extreme to the other.
Louise Bourgeois
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I always had the fear of being separated and abandoned. The sewing is my attempt to keep things together and make things whole.
Louise Bourgeois
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Everyone should have the right to marry. To make a commitment to love someone forever is a beautiful thing.
Louise Bourgeois
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Everywhere in the modern world there is neglect, the need to be recognized, which is not satisfied. Art is a way of recognizing oneself, which is why it will always be modern.
Louise Bourgeois
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Clothing is . . . an exercise in memory. It makes me explore the past: how did I feel when I wore that. They are like signposts in the search for the past.
Louise Bourgeois
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Art is a way of recognizing oneself.
Louise Bourgeois
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My knives are like a tongue - I love, I do not love, I hate. If you don’t love me, I am ready to attack. I am a double-edged knife.
Louise Bourgeois
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Art is a guarantee of sanity. That is the most important thing I have said.
Louise Bourgeois
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A work of art doesn't have to be explained.
Louise Bourgeois
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The Spider is an ode to my mother. She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver. . . Like spiders, my mother was very clever. Spiders are friendly presences that eat mosquitoes. We know that mosquitoes spread diseases and are therefore unwanted. So, spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother.
Louise Bourgeois
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I am not what I am, I am what I do with my hands.
Louise Bourgeois
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Every day you have to abandon your past or accept it and then, if you cannot accept it, you become a sculptor.
Louise Bourgeois