How could Michelangelo have seen his David in a block of marble? Man began to make images only because he discovered them nearly formed around him, already within reach. He saw them in a bone, in the bumps of a cave, in a piece of wood. One form suggested a woman to him, another a buffalo, still another the head of a monster.

The academic teaching on beauty is false. We have been misled, but so completely misled that we can no longer find so much as a shadow of a truth again. The beauties of the Parthenon, the Venuses, the Nymphs, the Narcisusses, are so may lies. Art is not the application of a canon of beauty, but what the instinct and the brain can conceive independently of that canon.

What I capture in spite of myself interests me more than my own ideas.

I understand my own pictures best six months after I have done them.

Never copy yourself, always copy someone else.

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

What I want is that my picture should evoke nothing but emotion.