"It takes a very long time to become young."

"One must act in painting as in life, directly."

"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."

"It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child."

"What do you think an artist is? ...he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war."

"There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun."

"The fact that for a long time Cubism has not been understood and that even today there are people who cannot see anything in it means nothing. I do not read English, an English book is a blank book to me. This does not mean that the English language does not exist. Why should I blame anyone but myself if I cannot understand what I know nothing about?' -Pablo Picasso."

"Sculpture is the art of the intelligence."

"Art is a lie that makes us realize truth."

"It takes a long time to become young."

"If only we could pull out our brain and use only our eyes."

"Art is the elimination of the unnecessary."

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

"Art is the lie that enables us to realize the truth."

"What is a face, really? Its own photo? Its make-up? Or is it a face as painted by such or such painter? That which is in front? Inside? Behind? And the rest? Doesn't everyone look at himself in his own particular way? Deformations simply do not exist."

"I want to live like a poor man with lots of money."

"The world doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?"

"The hidden harmony is better than the obvious."

"Two boys arrived yesterday with a pebble they said was the head of a dog until I pointed out that it was really a typewriter."

"God is really another artist. He invented the giraffe the elephant and the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things."

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

"Every now and then one paints a picture that seems to have opened a door and serves as a stepping stone to other things."

"Sculpture is the best comment that a painter can make on painting."

"Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? Why does one love the night, flowers, everything around one, without trying to understand them? But in the case of a painting people have to understand. If only they would realize above all that an artist works of necessity, that he himself is only a trifling bit of the world, and that no more importance should be attached to him than to plenty of other things which please us in the world, though we can't explain them. People who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree."

"When you are young and without success you have only a few friends. Then later on when you are rich and famous you still have a few ... if you are lucky."

"What one does is what counts. Not what one had the intention of doing."

"He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't. This is an inexorable, indisputable law."

"Bad artists copy. Good artists steal."

"Everything you can imagine is real."

"An idea is a point of departure and no more. As soon as you elaborate it, it becomes transformed by thought."

"God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephantand the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things."

"It took me a lifetime."

"Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not."

"Whatever the source of emotion that drives me to create, I want to give it a form which has some connection with the visible world, even if it is only to wage war on that world....I want my paintings to be able to defend themselves to resist the invader, just as though there were razor blades on all surfaces so no one could touch them without cutting his hands."

"I am a Communist and my painting is Communist painting."

"Action is the foundational key to all success."

"The people who make art their business are mostly imposters."

"I have a horror of people who speak about the beautiful. What is the beautiful? One must speak of problems in painting!"

"I do not seek. I find."

"Is there anything more dangerous than sympathetic understanding?"

"Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working."

"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."

"Work is a necessity for man. Man invented the alarm clock."

"Art is not the application of a canon of beauty but what the instinct and the brain can conceive beyond any canon. When we love a woman we don't start measuring her limbs."

"We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell."

"You have to have an idea of what you are going to do, but it should be a vague idea."

"Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time."

"Give me a museum and I'll fill it."

"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."

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