Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working. |
Is there anything more dangerous than sympathetic understanding? |
It is personality with a penny's worth of talent. Error which chances to rise above the commonplace. |
It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction. |
It means nothing to me. I have no opinion about it, and I don't care. |
It takes a long time to become young. |
It takes a long time to grow young. |
It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child |
Lord, protect me from what I want! |
Love is the greatest refreshment in life |
Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He recopies 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. |
Museums are just a lot of lies, and the people who make art their business are mostly imposters. We have infected the pictures in museums with all our stupidities, all our mistakes, all our poverty of spirit. We have turned them into petty and ridiculous things. |
My mother said to me, "If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope." Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso. |
My work is like a diary. To understand it, you have to see how it mirrors life. |
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. |