Painting isn't an aesthetic operation; it's a form of magic designed as mediator between this strange hostile world and us.

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.

People want to find a 'meaning' in everything and everyone. That's the disease of our age...

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

It takes a long time to become young.

Neither is there figurative and non-figurative art. All things appear to us in the shape of forms. Even in metaphysics ideas are expressed by forms. Well then, think how absurd it would be to think of painting without the imagery of forms. A figure, an object, a circle, are forms; they affect us more or less intensely.

To make oneself hated is more difficult than to make oneself loved.