In my work I have complete control, but about my life, I don't want to.

We always project into the future or reflect in the past, but we are so little in the present.

I'd always thought of art as something that was expressed through certain tools: painting, sculpture, photography, writing, film, music, architecture. And yes, performance. But this performance went beyond performance. This was life.

Immaterial art is the strongest because there's no obstacle; there's just energy, and I believe in energy.

I didn't take no for an answer. I've always been like that. If I think in my gut that I'm right, I do it. You have to have this kind of conviction. Otherwise, I would have given up many years ago. After the 1970s, all the performance artists started doing paintings and sculptures or architecture; performing was far too hard. I'm so happy I didn't give up.

When you get to my age of course you know you have to confront death. I want to die without anger, without fear and consciously, and these three things are not easy.

My first paintings were of my dreams. They were more real to me than the reality I was living in -- I didn't like my reality. I remember waking up, and the memory of my dreams was so strong that I would write them down, and then I would paint them, in just two very particular colors, a deep green and a night blue. Never anything else.

I always thought the more fucked-up childhood you have, the better artist you get, because you have more material to work with. I don't think anyone does anything from happiness. Happiness is such a good state, it doesn't need to be creative.

When I read a book, everything around me stopped existing. All the unhappiness in my family -- my parents' bitter fights, my grandmother's sadness at having had everything taken away from her -- disappeared. I merged with the characters.

My memoirs are full of humor, I had to change jokes because it was a little too dark.

I grew up with my grandmother because my parents were making careers and didn't have much time for me. She was a highly religious Serbian Orthodox, spending most of her time in church. It's a great mix, and I use all these elements in my work.

There are two kinds of loss of hope, one is the feeling when your pulse slows down and you are going to die, and there's nothing else left. The other loss of hope is when you're living in a country which becomes insecure, and you don't know what the future is. That's existential.

We always want to do things the way we like, that's why we never change.

It was incredible, Lady Gaga came to see the piece. She didn't sit with me, but it was all atwitter. Every single kid from 12 to 18 ran to see Lady Gaga and then Lady Gaga left and they stayed. And they stayed another day another day and it created a completely different culture, a different audience that I never had before.

What you get is the opening of your mind. I'm not preaching any new religion; I'm ritualizing everyday activities. You drink the water. You count the rice. You sit in Crystal Cave. You lie in Levitation Chamber. You push yourself to a new level.

I want people to come to me open and vulnerable. When they come to the gallery, they have to leave their watches, their computers, their Blackberrys, iPads, iPhones, because we are so incredibly used to technology, and I wanted to remove that.

Talking about performance is such a strange thing because it's so immaterial. We are talking about soft matter. We are talking about something that is invisible. You can't see it. You can't touch it. You just can feel it.

You create a friendship on a level that you've never done before. The basic kind of experience is to basically give love to total strangers all the time, and that really changed everything in me. And this piece transformed me more than any other one before. I saw my entire life differently. What do I have to do? What is my passion on this planet? I'm much more focused than I ever was before.

I have the greatest respect for Aborigine people, to whom I owe everything. The time I spent with members of the Pijantjatjara and Pintupi tribes in Australia was a transformative experience for me and one that has deeply and indelibly informed my entire life and art.

Even now, I have traces of the good little girl. When I am not performing, for instance, I am really very quiet and ordinary.