"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."

"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."

"The hidden harmony is better than the obvious."

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

"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."

"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."

"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!"

"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."

"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."

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

"We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand."

"It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction."

"One does a whole painting for one peach and people think just the opposite - that particular peach is but a detail."

"Our goals can only be reached through a vehicle of a plan, in which we must fervently believe, and upon which we must vigorously act. There is no other route to success."

"You mustn't always believe what I say. Questions tempt you to tell lies, particularly when there is no answer."

"What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace. It may happen that this boy will become a real painter some day, or even a great painter. But then he will have to begin everything again, from zero."

"Colors, like features, follow the changes of the emotions."

"The more technique you have, the less you have to worry about it. The more technique there is, the less there is."

"Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen."

"The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web."

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

"Youth has no age."

"I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else."

"To draw you must close your eyes and sing."

"There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality."

"The older you get the stronger the wind gets - and it's always in your face."

"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone."

"The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls."

"Every act of creation is first an act of destruction."

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."

"Love is the greatest refreshment in life."

"If there were only one truth, you couldn't paint a hundred canvases on the same theme."