I want to get to the stage where nobody can tell how a picture of mine is done. What's the point of that? Simply that I want nothing but emotion given off by it.

Art is never chaste. It ought to be forbidden to ignorant innocents, never allowed into contact with those not sufficiently prepared. Yes, art is dangerous. Where it is chaste, it is not art.

It is my misfortune - and probably my delight - to use things as my passions tell me. What a miserable fate for a painter who adores blondes to have to stop himself putting them into a picture because they don't go with the basket of fruit! . . . I put all the things I like into my pictures. The things - so much the worse for them. They just have to put up with it.

When you start with a portrait and try to find pure form by abstracting more and more, you must end up with an egg.

If there is something to steal, I steal it.

Are we to paint what's on the face, what's inside the face, or what's behind it?

Age only matters when one is aging. Now that I have arrived at a great age, I might as well be twenty.