Pablo Picasso

“Why assume that to look is to see?”

“Today we haven't the heart to expel the painters and poets from society because we refuse to admit to ourselves that there is any danger in keeping them in our midst.”

“For a long time I limited myself to one colour - as a form of discipline.”

“All things considered, there is only Matisse.”

“If everybody is looking for it, then nobody is finding it. If we were cultured, we would not be conscious of lacking culture. We would regard it as something natural and would not make so much fuss about it. And if we knew the real value of this word we would be cultured enough not to give it so much importance.”

“If I knew what the meaning of art was, I wouldn't tell you.”

“Motivation is in the world around us. We have an infinite amount of material at our disposal, in the lives of those we meet, in what we see and feel, in what we discuss and from the passion of every woman.”

“It is a well-known fact that we see the faults in other's works more readily than we do in our own.”

“Ah, good taste! What a dreadful thing! Taste is the enemy of creativeness.”

“All children paint like geniuses. What do we do to them that so quickly dulls this ability?”

“To blossom forth, a work of art must ignore or rather forget all the rules.”

“When I paint I feel that all the artists of the past are behind me.”

“Painting is just another way of keeping a diary.”

“If I don't have red, I use blue.”

“[In developing your potential] ... I don't develop; I am”

“The artist spends the first part of his life with the dead, the second with the living, and the third with himself.”

“I put in my pictures everything I like. So much the worse for the things - they have to get along with one another.”

“Age only matters when one is aging. Now that I have arrived at a great age, I might as well be twenty.”

“I draw like other people bite their nails.”

“When I haven't any blue I use red.”

“I want to know one thing, what is color?”

“Painting isn't a question of sensibility; it's a matter of seizing the power, taking over from nature, not expecting her to supply you with information and good advice.”

“If I paint a wild horse, you might not see the horse... but surely you will see the wildness!”

“To find is the thing.”

“What does it mean for a painter to paint in the manner of So-and-So or to actually imitate someone else? What's wrong with that? On the contrary, it's a good idea. You should constantly try to paint like someone else. But the thing is, you can't! You would like to. You try. But it turns out to be a botch... And it's at the very moment you make a botch of it that you're yourself.”

“Painting is stronger than me, it makes me do it's bidding.”

“To know what you’re going to draw, you have to begin drawing... When I find myself facing a blank page, that’s always going through my head. What I capture in spite of myself interests me more than my own ideas.”

“Rhythm is a perception of time... when drawing, the tiredness of the hand is a rhythm.”

“All Children are Artists”

“When you're really young, you're young for life.”

“Why do you try to understand art? Do you try to understand the song of a bird?”

“Those trying to explain pictures are as a rule completely mistaken.”

“People who read are people who dream.”

“I want to get to the stage where nobody can tell how a picture of mine is done. What's the point of that? Simply that I want nothing but emotion given off by it.”

“I have had no true friends, only lovers.”

“All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”

“The people no longer seek consolation in art. But the refined people, the rich, the idlers seek the new, the extraordinary, the extravagant, the scandalous.”

“Why do two colors, put one next to the other, sing? Can one really explain this? no. Just as one can never learn how to paint.”

“In every photographer there was a painter, a true artist, awaiting expression.”

“When you begin a picture you often make some pretty discoveries. You must be on guard against these. Destroy the thing, do it over several times. In each destroying of a beautiful discovery, the artist does not really suppress it, but rather condenses it, makes it more substantial. What comes out in the end is the result of discarded finds. Otherwise you become your own connoisseur.”

“If I paint a hammer and sickle people may think it is a representation of Communism, but for me it is only a hammer and sickle. I just want to reproduce the objects for what they are, not for what they mean.”

“"Picasso" is of Italian origin, as you know. And the name a person bears or adopts has its importance.”

“Basically the French are all peasants.”

“An artist must be very careful not to look for models. As soon as one artist takes another as model, he is lost. There is no other point of departure than reality.”

“Academic training in beauty is a sham. We have been so deceived, but so well deceived that we can scarcely get back even a shadow of the truth.”

“When art critics get together they talk about Form and Structure and Meaning. When artists get together they talk about where you can buy cheap turpentine.”

“It took me a lifetime.”

“Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.”

“I simply painted images of what was before my eyes; it is for others to find hidden meaning in them.”

“Critics, mathematicians, scientists and busybodies want to classify everything, marking the boundaries and limits... In art, there is room for all possibilities.”