Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.

...art is something subversive. It's something that should not be free. Art and liberty, like the fire of Prometheus, are things that one must steal, to be used against the established order.

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.

If all the ways I have been along were marked on a map and joined up with a line, it might represent a minotaur.

One does a whole painting for one peach and people think just the opposite - that particular peach is but a detail.

Everybody has the same energy potential. The average person wastes his in a dozen little ways. I bring mine to bear on one thing only: my paintings, and everything else is sacrificed to it...myself included.

There are only two types of women - goddesses and doormats.