Everyone wants to understand art. Why not try to understand the song of a bird? ...people who try to explain pictures are usually barking up the wrong tree.

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction.

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

There's nothing worse than a brilliant beginning.

Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.

I would like to manage to prevent people from ever seeing how a picture of mine has been done. What can it possibly matter? What I want is that the only thing emanating from my pictures should be emotion.

In one way or another, I always marked my pictures. But there were times when I put my signature on the back of the canvas. All my works from the cubist period, until about 1914, have my name and the date on the back side of the stretcher. I know someone spread the story that in Céret, Braque and I decided not to sign our pictures anymore. But that's just a legend!