Pablo Picasso Quotes

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist while still achieving milestones and outcomes as required by certain funders and policy-makers.”

“Art is a finger up the bourgeoisie ass.”

“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.”

“Love must be proven by facts and not by reasons.”

“I draw like other people bite their nails.”

“My friends back in Barcelona called me by that name (Picasso). It was stranger, more resonant, than "Ruiz." And those are probably the reasons I adopted it. Do you know what appealed to me about that name? Well, it was undoubtedly the double s, which is fairly unusual in Spain.”

“When there's dust missing here or there, it's because someone has touched my things. I see immediately someone has been there. And it's because I live constantly with dust, in dust, that I prefer to wear gray suits, the only color on which it leaves no trace.”

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

“There are only two types of women - goddesses and doormats.”

“There's nothing more difficult than a line.”

“Can you imagine me calling myself "Ruiz"? "Pablo Ruiz"? "Diego-José Ruiz"? Or "Juan-Népomucène Ruiz"? I was given I don't know how many names.”

“A good picture, any picture, has to be bristling with razor blades.”

“Drawing is a kind of hypnotism: one looks in such a way at the model, that he comes and takes a seat on the paper.”

“We must pick out what is good for us where we can find it.”

“For being a bad student I was banished to the 'calaboose' - a bare cell with whitewashed walls and a bench to sit on. I liked it there, because I took along a sketch pad and drew incessantly I could have stayed there forever drawing without stopping”

“I hate it when people pilfer my things.”

“Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He copies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He’s convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.”

“There ought to be an absolute dictatorship... a dictatorship of painters... a dictatorship of one painter... to suppress all those who have betrayed us.”

“I deal with painting as I deal with things, I paint a window just as I look out of a window. If an open window looks wrong in a picture, I draw the curtain and shut it, just as I would in my own room. In painting, as in life, you must act directly.”

“A plagiarist steals from one person. A true artist steals from everybody.”

“It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.”

“The connoisseur of painting gives only bad advice to the painter. For that reason I have given up trying to judge myself.”

“One must act in painting as in life, directly.”

“Unless your work gives you trouble, it is no good.”

“Two of the most frustrated trades are dentists and photographers - dentists because they want to be doctors, and photographers because they want to be painters.”