“Basically the French are all peasants.”
“I must keep on trying, just to keep the experiment going until I get tired of it all. Even if the last result is not necessarily the best, I stop when my interest in the problem wanes.”
“No doubt, it is useful for an artist to know all the forms of art which have preceded or which accompany his. That is a sign of strength if it is a question of looking for a stimulus or recognizing mistakes he must avoid.”
“If I could say this I wouldn't have to paint.”
“I want to know one thing, what is color?”
“I have had no true friends, only lovers.”
“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.”
“One cannot be a sorcerer all the time. How could one live?”
“In life you throw a ball. You hope it will reach a wall and bounce back so you can throw it again. You hope your friends will provide that wall.”
“It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.”
“Painting isn't made for the decoration of apartments; it is a weapon to be used offensively and defensively against the enemy.”
“I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting!”
“All human beings are born with the same creative potential. Most people squander theirs away on a million superfluous things. I expend mine on one thing and one thing only: my art.”
“I hate that aesthetic game of the eye and the mind, played by these connoisseurs, these mandarins who "appreciate" beauty. What is beauty, anyway? There's no such thing. I never "appreciate," any more than I "like." I love it or I hate.”
“We don't grow older, we grow riper.”
“There is only one way to see things, until someone shows us how to look at them with different eyes”
“I do not seek. I find.”
“I work with few colors, what creates the illusion of quantity is that they fell in the right place.”
“Computers are useless - all they can give you are answers.”
“Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.”
“When German soldiers used to come to my studio and look at my pictures of Guernica, they'd ask 'Did you do this?'. And I'd say, 'No, you did.'”
“In art, there is neither past nor future. The art that is not in the present will never be.”
“Art is a lie that makes us realize truth.”
“If you know exactly what you're going to do, what's the good in doingit?”
“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.”
