But when I am alone, I do not have the effrontery to consider myself an artist at all, not in the grand old meaning of the word: Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, Goya were great painters. I am only a public clown-a mountebank. I have understood my time and have exploited the imbecility, the vanity, the greed of my contemporaries. It is a bitter confession, this confession of mine, more painful than it may seem. But at least and at last it does have the merit of being honest.

Everything we can dream can be real.

You mustn't always believe what I say. Questions tempt you to tell lies, particularly when there is no answer.

Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?

If you are a genius and unsuccessful, everybody treats you as if you were a genius, but when you come to be successful, when you commence to earn money, when you are really successful, then your family and everybody no longer treats you like a genius, they treat you like a man who has become successful.

To arrive at abstraction, it is always necessary to begin with a concrete reality.

This idea of art for art's sake is a hoax.