People are always asking me to sign my old canvases. It's ridiculous!

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

We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell.

My mother said to me, 'If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope.' Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso.

Style is besides the point. Nobody would pay attention if one always said the same thing, in the same words and the same tone of voice.

When I die, it will be a shipwreck, and as when a huge ship sinks, many people all around will be sucked down with it.

Matisse makes a drawing, then he makes a copy of it. He copies it five times, ten times, always clarifying the line. He’s convinced that the last, the most stripped down, is the best, the purest, the definitive one; and in fact, most of the time, it was the first. In drawing, nothing is better than the first attempt.