Time & Perspective Quote by Anish Kapoor

Kapoor is dressing up a studio truth as a philosophical shrug: the most productive moments often begin as a failure of direction. The line turns “I don’t know what to do” from an embarrassment into a method. Not-knowing isn’t a void to be filled with confidence; it’s a condition that triggers motion. That’s the sly pivot here: boredom, usually framed as a cultural problem to be solved (scrolling, stimuli, constant busyness), becomes an engine for experimentation.

The phrasing matters. “Precisely” signals an artist’s insistence that the breakthrough isn’t despite confusion but because of it. “Boredom drives one” shifts agency away from the heroic individual toward a mood, almost an external force. Kapoor is demystifying inspiration without killing it: the work isn’t a lightning bolt, it’s a “host of possibilities” tried under the pressure of restlessness.

Then comes the kicker: “to either get somewhere or not get anywhere.” He keeps failure in the sentence as an equal outcome, which reads like a quiet rebuke to result-obsessed creative culture. In a Kapoor context - an artist known for courting the sublime with monumental forms and voids, reflective surfaces and impossibilities - the “not anywhere” is not wasted time. It’s the necessary negative space where form can show up.

Subtext: permission. Permission to wander, to test, to make ugly drafts, to let the studio be a laboratory instead of a brand. It’s a defense of process in an age that demands product.