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

Drawing is the artist's most direct and spontaneous expression, a species of writing: it reveals, better than does painting, his true personality.

An artist must approach his work in the spirit of the criminal about to commit a crime.

Realism is more important than the sentiment of the picture.

It is all very well to copy what one sees, but it is far better to draw what one now only sees in one's memory. That is a transformation in which imagination collaborates with memory.

Instantaneity is photography.

No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.