The role of the artist, like that of the scholar, consists of seizing current truths often repeated to him, but which will take on new meaning for him and which he will make his own when he has grasped their deepest significance.

Don't wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working.

Much of the beauty that arises in art comes from the struggle an artist wages with his limited medium.

Cutting straight into color reminds me of the direct carving of the sculptor.

All art worthy of the name is religious.

A new painting is a unique event, a birth, which enriches the universe as it is grasped by the human mind, by bringing a new form into it.

I don't paint women, I paint pictures. . . What I am after above all is expression. If in a portrait I put eyes, a nose, a mouth, there isn't much use; on the contrary it paralyses the imagination of the spectator, and obliges us to see the person in a certain way.