In painting you must give the idea of the true by means of the false.

You have to have a high conception, not of what you are doing, but of what you may do one day: without that, there's no point in working.

Daylight is too easy. What I want is difficult - the atmosphere of lamps and moonlight.

Realism is more important than the sentiment of the picture.

Only two of my personalities are schizophrenic, but one of them is paranoid and the other one is out to get him. Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.

Do portraits of people in familiar and typical attitudes, above all give to their face the same choice of expression that one gives to their body.

Art is vice. One does not wed it, one rapes it.