You must always work not just within but below your means. If you can handle three elements, handle only two. If you can handle ten, then handle only five. In that way the ones you do handle, you handle with more ease, more mastery, and you create a feeling of strength in reserve.

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

Can you imagine me calling myself "Ruiz"? "Pablo Ruiz"? "Diego-José Ruiz"? Or "Juan-Népomucène Ruiz"? I was given I don't know how many names.

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

I simply painted images of what was before my eyes; it is for others to find hidden meaning in them.

It's not what the artist does that counts; it's what he is.

What is conserved in the ground? Stone, bronze, ivory, bone, sometimes pottery. Never wood objects, no fabric or skins. That completely skews our notions about primitive man.