Maurizio Cattelan Quotes

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it.

Life is that perfect fine line between ironies.

You can't say you want things to be simple and then in the next breath ask me to be honest.

I think the world is always improving and always not improving. I think that both are simultaneously happening all the time.

Being ambivalent doesn't mean that you're a relevatist, that anything goes; it just means that you show the complexity of life. Life is always complex.

A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.

You may find many contradictory statements and philosophies within my writings. However, to this I will say such is life, for life is full of contradictions.

I go back and forth between wanting to be abundantly simple and maddeningly complex.

There's a dark side to everything.

I think the phrase that resonates from 'Just One Year' is something I sort of live by: 'The truth and its opposite are flip sides of the same coin.'

I guess I found it useful to realise that everything is true at once, you know? You can pull back and say, 'Everything will be fine,' but you can also be in a situation and say, 'Not everything is going to be fine.'

Contradiction was something I really like when it is embraced in that kind of philosophy.

All I really care about is that I'm being honest and I'm real and I'm coming from a real place. There's a part of me that's a total cad and a part of me that's also a family man.

Be obscure clearly.

The truth is rarely pure and never simple.

Disorder brings about order.

The thing about Wagner is we're always wrong about him, because he always embraces opposites. There are things in his operas which viewed one way are naturalistic, and viewed another way are symbolic, but the problem is you can't represent both views on stage at once.

Wagner is contrapuntal in a philosophical way as well as a musical way. What I mean by that is that every tendency has its opposite, and you see that in the man himself. He's a metaphysical hermaphrodite - he embraces hard and soft, masculine and feminine.

As a reader and a writer, I'm happiest when apparently mutually exclusive states can somehow coexist.

Everything in life is a double-edged sword.

That's been a huge recurring thing in growing up - allowing two things to exist in the same space even though, instinctively, they might not be designated to.

It took me a long time to learn both good and bad can exist simultaneously.

You walked in, laughing, tears welling confused, mingling in your throat. How can you be so many women to so many people, oh you strange girl?

Is it good or bad?" she asked Issa. The wrong question, she knew. She just couldn't help herself. "It's both, sweet girl," said Issa. "like everything.