I created a vision of David in my mind and simply carved away everything that was not David.

For those who feel it, nothing makes the soul so religious and pure as the endeavor to create something perfect; for God is perfection, and whoever strives after it, is striving after something divine. True painting is only the image of the perfection of God, a shadow of the pencil with which he paints, a melody, a striving after harmony.

I live in sin, to kill myself I live; no longer my life my own, but sin's; my good is given to me by heaven, my evil by myself, by my free will, of which I am deprived.

Lord, grant that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.

I am a poor man and of little worth, who is laboring in that art that God has given me in order to extend my life as long as possible.

Genius is infinite painstaking.

A good artist ought never to allow impatience to overcome his sense of the main end of art - perfection