People From Mumbai

"I wake up early, does some meditation, take my children to school, and then go to the studio to begin my day's work. The food for his soul is typically India, but with lots of salad on the side."

"It was there [India] I realised that engineering was not my cup of tea. I proceeded to London to look for avenues and got myself enrolled into Hornsey College of Art there. Initially, there was no hope for me, but one exhibition in 1979 made me. That proved to be extremely lucky for me."

"It's a shame that I haven't done an exhibition in India till now. But I am working on one in Delhi for January 2005. If things go well, there will be another in Mumbai too."

"This is a terror of a space, probably much more difficult than the Turbine Hall. It's three times the size, huge horizontally and vertically and above all the light is a killer. It's almost brighter than it is outside."

"It is more than a month that he's been completely disappeared. It is a true tragedy. Accuse him of something. Give him a lawyer. Let him defend himself …"

"I've never met Ai Weiwei but he's a colleague, an artist. In a very simple way he is heroically recording human existence. All he's done is to record death by administration, death by corruption, inefficiency. I don't even think he's pointing that sharp a finger, frankly."

"It's a building with a curious, difficult history that is inexorably linked to the history of Berlin, [he said] That's very potent. You can't make a show here without some reference to all of that. And it certainly makes a show here so much more interesting."

"The UK has two things, the arts and education, and both of them it pushes into the corner. It's the hugest, hugest mistake. Why do British ministers meet anyone from the arts other than to cut them? Compared to Germany, Britain has got quite a long way to go there, frankly."

"In the UK, while the arts are the second biggest sector after banking, they probably form less than one tenth of 1% of government spending. It's completely scuzzy."

"In Germany, it seems that the intellectual and aesthetic life are to be celebrated and are seen as part of a real and good education, whereas in Britain, traditionally – certainly since the Enlightenment – we've been afraid of anything intellectual, aesthetic, visual."

"Germans have a rather healthy respect for the arts and artists, [could] not be more different from the British perspective."

"One of the influences in his design for the tower was the Tower of Babel the sense of building the impossible” that “has something mythic about it. The spaces inside the structure, in between the twisting steel, are “cathedral like”, according to Balmond, while according to Kapoor, the intention is that visitors will engage with the piece as they wind “up and up and in on oneself” on the spiral walkway."

"It is a conjunction of images I have always loved in his Sonnets to Orpheus and this work is, in a way, a kind of eye which is reflecting images endlessly"

"There’s something imminent in the work, but the circle is only completed by the viewer."

"The idea is that the object has a language unto itself."

"I think I understand something about space. I think the job of a sculptor is spatial as much as it is to do with form."

"Artists don’t make objects. Artists make mythologies."

"Jerusalem is all about a very special relationship between the ground and the sky. This work attempts to bring the two together."

"I’m thinking about the mythical wonders of the world, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and the Tower of Babel. It’s as if the collective will comes up with something that has resonance on an individual level and so becomes mythic. I can claim to take that as a model for a way of thinking. Art can do it, and I’m going to have a damn good go. I want to occupy the territory, but the territory is an idea and a way of thinking as much as a context that generates objects."

"Do you know there’s a wonderful Christian idea in which Thomas stretches his hands out to try to touch Christ’s wound and Christ says ‘Noli me tangere’ (do not touch me). What your eyes see your hands will always try to affirm. Much of dealing with the non-material is about this confusion between the hand and the eye, the ear and the eye, when the thing that you look at is uncertain, your body demands a kind of readjustment, it demands certainty. Something happens to where you are, to space; time changes. Time, I think, becomes slower. The mystical truth of art is time."

"I am interested in sculpture that manipulates the viewer into a specific relation with both space and time. Time, on two levels; one narratively and cinematically as a matter of the passage through the work, and the other as a literal elongation of the moment. This has to do with form and colour and the propensity of colour to induce reverie. Consequently, I hope, an elongation of time. Space is as complex, the space contained in an objectmust be bigger than the object which contains it. My aim is to separate the object from its object-hood."

"I think I’ve had three or four moments in my work over the last twenty-five years that have been real discoveries. The pigment pieces felt to me as if they were a discovery about an object and what an object can be; how an object can be and not be. Then, of course, the void pieces. The idea that if I empty out all the content and just make something that is an empty form, I don’t empty out the content at all. The content is there in a way that’s more surprising than if I tried to make a content. So, therefore, the idea that subject matter is somehow not the same as content. Then, in a different sort of way, moving from matte surfaces to shiny surfaces. In terms of the fact that the traditional sublime is the matte surface, deep and absorbing, and that the shiny might be a modern sublime, which is fully reflective, absolutely present, and returns the gaze. This feels like a new way to think about the non-objective object."

"Red is a colour I’ve felt very strongly about. Maybe red is a very Indian colour, maybe it’s one of those things that I grew up with and recognise at some other level. Of course, it is the colour of the interior of our bodies. Red is the centre."

"Is it my role as an artist to say something, to express, to be expressive? I think it’s my role as an artist to bring to expression;it’s not my role to be expressive. I’ve got nothing particular to say, I don’t have any message to give anyone. But it is my role to bring to expression, let’s say, to define means that allow phenomenological and other perceptions, which one might use, one might work with, and then move towards a poetic existence."

"The exhibition also includes highlights such as the monumental work Svayambh, which in Sanskrit, means 'self-generated'."

"These include a select group of Mr. Kapoor's early pigment sculptures, beguiling mirror-polished stainless steel sculptures and cement sculptures on display for the first time,""

"Architects have always hoped to find a way to skip that stage between design and finished building."

"Sotheby's was proud to offer the monumental work by Anish Kapoor, which manifests all the pioneering ingenuity in material and spatial possibilities that characterise the very best output of the world-renowned sculptor."

"I adore the concept of being in love with one guy and spending the rest of my life with him."

"I was quite the media darling."

"Quoted in Verve: The Spirit of Today's Woman (page 74)"

"For me dancing is not just moving your arms and legs but basically it's a very spiritual experience. It's part of me and a second nature to me. You can say it is in my blood."

"I don't understand the difference between being a star and being an actress. If you are a good actress, you can also be a star but it does not work the other way round. You must be able to deliver the goods."

"I hope I am not sounding presumptuous or vain. but I think like Sridevi, I was another heroine who could break the barriers between the classes and the masses."

"It's so ironical. When you finally achieve recognition, you hide behind dark glasses."

"Good films flop, atrocious films do well. Uncertainty is the only certainty in this business."

"The tendency in the media is to portray everyone in the film industry as sex-starved creatures. Please spare us."

"Depend on yourself and you will never be let down."

"Acting is a bit like cycling. Once you’ve got the hang of it, you just peddle on."

"I find it funny to praise myself, but I think I am beautiful, just like Chandramukhi."

"I have never been a part of the numbers game. We are not racing horses, who should be numbered. Either the work you do is good or bad."

"When Hussainji narrated the script [on Gaja Gamini] to me, I couldn´t understand it. And I told him so. So, he worked out a storyboard and then I could visualize the whole film. You know the film is like a painting on celluloid."

"My family gives me enough security and warmth. I don’t have to look for it outside! After achieving so much success and fame I’m apprehensive about people’s motives. I want to be sure that people want to be friends with me and not my fame!"

"Madhuri was crowned the queen of Bollywood and her star status reached a level where she was called the ‘female Amitabh Bachhan’. Her stage shows sold out and fans flocked to her shootings to catch a glimpse of the ultimate star. She has ever been called the peace maker between India and Pakistan as a Pakistani official joked to a national newspaper on his visit to India "You can keep Kashmir, give us Madhuri"."

"Nightingale of Parliament."

"Madhuri is an excellent dancer. She is in the same league with actresses like Waheeda Rehman and Meena Kumari as far as dancing is concerned. She dances with a lot of grace. I think she is the best dancer in Indian cinema after Waheeda Rehman. She reminds me of her,"

"I worked with her for the first time in 1997 for a dance sequence where actor (Shah Rukh) is playing the drum in another room and she dances on those beats."

"It has been more than 15 years but her dedication towards dance is the same. She grasps quickly and is a genius dancer. Her expressions are just perfect."

"Madhuri has kept the tradition of classical dance in cinema alive. Be it Devdas's 'Kahe Ched Mohe' or dance sequence of DTPH , she has performed brilliantly."

"Certainly we were disappointed. But the thing that really kept us in our spirits was that the entire country was behind us."