A painting is above all a product of the artist's imagination, it must never be a copy. If, at a later stage, he wants to add two or three touches from nature, of course it doesn't spoil anything.

If I could have had my own way, I would have confined myself to black and white.

It requires courage to make a frontal attack on nature through the broad planes and the large lines and it is cowardly to do it by the facets and details. It is a battle.

I put it [picture "A still life of a pear" by Edouard Manet] there [on the wall, next to the picture "Jupiter and Thetis" by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres], for a pear like that would overthrow any god.

I really have a lot of stuff in my head; if only there were insurance companies for that as there are for so many things.

There is love, and there is work; and we have only one heart.

Drawing is not the same as form, it is a way of seeing form.