Quotes by Mike Mills

To me, sadness and humor arent disrelated and humor is the best tool Ive had against the sadness in my life.

Sadness is a super important thing not to be ashamed about but to include in our lives. One of the bigger problems with sadness or depression is theres so much shame around it. If you have it youre a failure. You are felt as being very unattractive.

Being a good Hans Haacke student, part of his influence on me is that theres no difference between a gallery show and a film - or even an ad and a T-shirt-in terms of cultural legitimacy. Theyre just different contexts in which to have some sort of communication.

I would hate to think Im promoting sadness as an aesthetic. But I grew up in not just a family but a town and a culture where sadness is something youre taught to feel shame about. You end up chronically desiring what can be a very sentimental idea of love and connection. A lot of my work has been about trying to make a space for sadness.

I think that animals arent less intelligent than humans, theyre just of a different intelligence. We have five million smell-sensitive cells in our nose, they have two hundred and fifty million - they can smell emotion. They can smell different types of emotion, they just have another type of intelligence.

Its funny now how much we look at - whatever you want to call it: art, design, culture stuff, film - online, and how in the online world, youre instantly global.

My experience, with both my parents, is that grief has a lot of down, sad things, but I was also really emotionally raw, in the first year after each of them passed. Flowers smelled more intensely, my relationships were hotter, and I was more willing to risk. I was going for it a lot more. I was unsober and I wasnt playing by my rules.

Theres great sadness and life doesnt work out like you would want, on a lot of levels, but theres no need to feel all alone. This happens to everybody, so theres no self-pity. This is the ride that humans are on, and all of it is essential for our natural part of it.