Art is not truth; art is the lie which makes us see the truth.

Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He copies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He’s convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.

One cannot be a sorcerer all the time. How could one live?

It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.

My whole life has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against Reaction and the death of art.

Have you noticed that bones are always modeled and not carved, that you always have the impression they come from a mold, that they were first modeled in clay? Any bone you look at, you always find fingerprints on it.

If I spit, they will take my spit and frame it as great art.