It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.

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.

Almost every evening, either I went to [Georges] Braque's studio or Braque came to mine. Each of us had to see what the other had done during the day. We criticized each other's work. A canvas wasn't finished unless both of us felt it was.

Why do you try to understand art? Do you try to understand the song of a bird?

Through art we express our conception of what nature is not.

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

When we discovered cubism, we did not have the aim of discovering cubism. We only wanted to express what was in us.