Anselm Kiefer

Life is an illusion. I am held together in the nothingness by art.

If I do something that depresses, it's not because I'm depressed, but because political life and history is depressing.

Ruins, for me, are the beginning. With the debris, you can construct new ideas. They are symbols of a beginning.

After ten years of word processing, I can't even do hand writing anymore.

Another thing that freaks me out is time. Time is like a book. You have a beginning, a middle and an end. It's just a cycle.

The first thing that inspires me is my mood, but I take inspiration from a lot of things: a rock song, a romantic movie or a specific lifestyle, like 1960s London and, of course, Italian 'dolce vita!'