If you speak of beauty, you are at once suspected of...kitsch.

Painting is the passage from the chaos of the emotions to the order of the possible.

The best way to begin is to say: 'Balthus is a painter of whom nothing is known. And now let us have a look at the paintings'.

The craft of painting has virtually disappeared. There is hardly anyone left who really possesses it. For evidence one has only to look at the painters of this century.

Painting is a source of endless pleasure, but also of great anguish.

Painting what I experience, translating what I feel, is a great liberation. But it is also work, self-examination, consciousness, criticism, struggle.

One must always draw, draw with the eyes, when one cannot draw with a pencil.