Creativity Quote by Damien Hirst

Damien Hirst’s line lands like a deadpan confession from the high priest of art-world appetite: “There’s no possible way you can get what you want.” It’s blunt, almost parental in its refusal, but the subtext is pure Hirst - a mix of seduction and slap. He’s speaking from inside a culture built on desire (for objects, status, permanence) while insisting that desire is structurally unsatisfiable. Not “you might not get it,” but you can’t. Full stop.

The intent reads less like self-help pessimism than a diagnostic of the machinery he’s helped monetize. Hirst’s work has always staged wanting as spectacle: animals suspended in formaldehyde, diamonds arranged into a skull, spot paintings that look like pharmaceuticals for the soul. These pieces don’t just depict mortality; they package it as something you can own, hang, insure, and flaunt. The quote punctures that transaction. Death is the ultimate unmet demand, and consumer culture’s workaround is to keep upgrading the fantasy.

Context matters: Hirst rose with the YBAs in a Britain where art learned to behave like luxury goods and tabloid headlines at once. The line sounds like the artist admitting the con, but also doubling down on it. If satisfaction is impossible, the chase becomes the product. That’s the darker brilliance here: he’s not discouraging desire; he’s explaining why it never stops - and why the market, like his art, depends on that restless hunger.