So let us then try to climb the mountain, not by stepping on what is below us, but to pull us up at what is above us, for my part at the stars; amen.

At moments of great enthusiasm it seems to me that no one in the world has ever made something this beautiful and important.

A woman once rang me up and said, 'Mr. Escher, I am absolutely crazy about your work. In your print -Reptiles- you have given such a striking illustration of reincarnation.' I replied, 'Madam, if that's the way you see it, so be it.'

I never got a pass mark in math... Just imagine - mathematicians now use my prints to illustrate their books. Funny me consorting with all these learned folks, as though I were their long lost brother. I guess they are unaware of the fact that I am ignorant about the whole thing.

I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world, not in a chaos without norms, even though that is how it sometimes appears. My subjects are also often playful: I cannot refrain from demonstrating the nonsensicalness of some of what we take to be irrefutable certainties. It is, for example, a pleasure to deliberately mix together objects of two and three dimensions, surface and spatial relationships, and to make fun of gravity.

I don't use drugs, my dreams are frightening enough.

I might be in the basement. I'll go upstairs and check. We adore chaos because we love to produce order. I don't use drugs; my dreams are frightening enough.