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• I can’t wait to get into a position to make really bad art and get away with it. At the moment if I did certain things people would look at it, consider it and then say "f off". But after a while you can get away with things.
  • Spalding, Julian. "Why it's OK not to like modern art", The Times, 2003-05-08.
  • Hirst quoted by Julian Stallabrass in 1990.

• I was with this guy who was a plasterer, and at lunchtime he was eating a stuffed heart . . . I was thinking, "I'm not like these guys. I'm an artist." And I saw a bee come over to some flowers and get all the pollen out. I was looking and thinking, "How does it do that?" And then the guy who was eating the stuffed heart said, "How does that bee do that?"
  • Beckett, Andy. "Arts: A Strange Case", The Independent, 1995-11-12
  • Talking about when he worked as a builder after college

• I just wanted to find out where the boundaries were. So far I've found there aren't any. I just wanted to be stopped, and no one will stop me.
  • Kuhn, Nicola, "You can puff all you like Damien, but the wind's gone out of Britart", The Guardian, 1999-03-16.

• The best spot painting you can have by me is one painted by Rachel.
  • On the Way to Work, p. 82, Faber and Faber, 2001.
  • Most of Hirst's "spot paintings" are executed by assistants.

• I started taking cocaine and drink ... I turned into a babbling fucking wreck.
  • On the Way to Work, Faber and Faber, 2001.