Damien Hirst Quotes

I don't think of myself as being invincible anymore.

You never expect anything when you are 20 because you think that you'll never get older.

I considered that I had to write stories about the people I had met, with whom I'd worked, the history of my books - just in case I up and die.

Age wins and one must learn to grow old.

Being halfway through my life, I think we start feeling less invincible and we start thinking more about the important things.

I don't feel invincible because I'm human.

After I was 70, I realized that, 'Okay, I would like to have another 50 years, and I probably could.' But part of me is saying, 'Maybe I'm not going to have that much time.'

Old age is always wakeful; as if, the longer linked with life, the less man has to do with aught that looks like death.

One of the things I noticed is that people really change when they realize their expiration date is coming, and they know what it is. Most of us don't: we just hope we can live as long as we can and do as much good as we can.

Every time I think that I'm getting old, and gradually going to the grave, something else happens.

In my 20s, life seemed endless. At 49, I've had a chance to see how dark life can be, and I am far more aware of the constraints of time than when I wrote 'The Kite Runner.' I realise there is only a limited number of things I can do.

Some people might think they're invincible, but I don't.

At the end of the day, when you're young you think you're invincible.

For policemen to be honest about the fact that they may be fearful when they come into a certain situation, not understanding what's going to happen. The only way things will change and things will get better is if people are able to be honest without feeling like they're going to be offended, or they're going to offend someone else.

In your twenties, you think you are immortal. In your thirties, you hope you are immortal.

You walk around feeling like a teenager and immortal your whole life, and suddenly there isn't much time left.

If being a kid is about learning how to live, then being a grown-up is about learning how to die.

We'd stared into the face of Death, and Death blinked first. You'd think that would make us feel brave and invincible. It didn't.

In the instant before the door opened, I could almost sense my life expanding just like a river whose waters have begun to swell; for I had never before taken such a drastic step to change the course of my own future. I was like a child tiptoeing along a precipice overlooking the sea. And yet somehow I hadn't imagined a great wave might come and strike me there, and wash everything away.

One of the things you realize about gettin older is that not everybody is goin to get older with you.

Writing when you are already very old means you have lived through the endings of so many things, you are more aware of the shape life takes. You begin to know Death, you've been close to it. But youth can barely imagine the end of this journey.

There is a past which is gone forever, but there is a future which is still our own.

The future will soon be a thing of the past.

The great problem with the future is that we die there. This is why it is so hard to take the future personally, especially the longer future, because that world is suffused with our absence.